- Symphony Towers emerged through the combination of Symphony Wireless and CTI Towers
- The company is led by 30-year industry veteran Bernard Borghei
- The action plan for 2025 is all about growth
If you think the surge in satellite connectivity is going to wipe out terrestrial tower companies, think again. In fact, some tower companies expect nothing but growth in their businesses this year.
That’s the plan for Symphony Towers Infrastructure, which was created last month via the combination of Symphony Wireless with CTI Towers.
Headed by Bernard Borghei, who co-founded Vertical Bridge, Symphony Towers is looking to drive growth in its wireless tower portfolio. The company already manages about 3,000 assets across the country and it wants to add to that portfolio.
“I'm looking at 2025 as a pure growth year for us, organically and also through acquisitions,” Borghei told Fierce. “I'm really excited about it because the level of activities in the private sector has picked up, and I think for sort of a newly merged company like us, it gives me the opportunity to be the buyer and go out there and assemble more of these portfolios and integrate them and continue to become an even more meaningful solution provider to our clients.”
Those clients include all the big U.S. wireless carriers, as well as tower companies. Symphony Towers is backed by alternative asset management firm Palistar Capital, which was founded by Omar Jaffrey, the chairman of Symphony Towers.
Private vs. public
Being a privately held tower company has its advantages. The big three public tower companies – American Tower, Crown Castle and SBA Communications – are obligated to please their investors and their goals don’t always align squarely with their wireless carrier customers. There’s been a bit of a love-hate relationship over the years, occasionally showing up in comments by wireless carrier execs and vice versa.
Borghei acknowledged this is a thing, but “they always find a mutually beneficial solution between them,” he said. “You know, the tower companies are here to stay. They are a meaningful part of this ecosystem, and they do provide necessary solutions for the carriers. At the same time, the tower companies know the critical importance of the carriers as major clients. I don’t think anybody will take that for granted. Both parties know that at the end of the day, cooler heads prevail.”
In announcing the combination of Symphony and CTI, Palistar Capital said the transaction created one of the top five private telecom infrastructure “platforms” in the U.S.
The issue for anyone tracking tower assets is that tower companies will change their definition of an “asset” to fit the type of sites they control, according to Ken Schmidt, president and CEO of Steel in the Air.
That makes it difficult to size up what’s what. Generally speaking, the other tower companies in Symphony’s sphere are Diamond Communications, ATC Networking, Phoenix Tower International and Tillman Infrastructure. But with 17,000 towers under its management, Vertical Bridge calls itself the biggest privately held tower company, although it is under the ownership of publicly traded DigitalBridge.
Regardless of where it fits in the broader ecosystem, Symphony Towers is in a good position to leverage its assets.
“Symphony is well positioned and well financed. They have acquired some good assets and have strong management,” Schmidt concluded.