US Cellular CEO Kenneth Meyers expressed interest in generating more revenue from the operator’s growing portfolio of tower assets through lease agreements with other operators, but was wary of doing so if it would require the company to give up first dibs on 5G radio placement.

As of the end of Q3, US Cellular owned a total of 4,119 towers. Meyers noted on an earnings call the implementation of new technology iterations has historically required it to “move or redeploy assets on those towers, and all the work that we’re looking at on 5G says we’re about to do that again”.

Radio placement will have a critical impact on 5G coverage, especially where mmWave spectrum is involved, CTO Mike Irizarry explained. He said recent tests conducted by the operator yielded usable mmWave signals 1km to 2km from a given tower site, but added the area covered was “a function of how high you mount the mmWave antennas on the tower”.

“Nothing is more important to our whole strategy than to be able to maintain a high quality network, and control of those towers ensures that we get first crack at that,” Meyers concluded.

The comments come as US Cellular prepares to ramp network investments, with a planned expansion of Voice-over-LTE service in the New England and mid-Atlantic regions planned for the first half of 2019 and 5G work scheduled for 2019 and 2020. Meyers said US Cellular is also planning to participate in upcoming auctions of mmWave spectrum.

Earnings rundown
Revenue of $1 billion in Q3 was up 4 per cent year on year from $963 million in Q3, while profit jumped from a net loss of $229 million in the year-ago period to $36 million in the black.

The growth came despite the loss of 1,000 wireless subscribers in the quarter, as the operator successfully transitioned more customers to its higher-cost unlimited tariffs. Meyers said 23 per cent of US Cellular’s post paid customers are now on unlimited plans, adding that cohort uses an average of nearly 9GB of data per month.