Fisher German now has one of the few specialist departments able to provide owners of rural and commercial property with bespoke advice tailored to their own needs.
The team was established 12 years ago and now consists of eight telecoms specialists across six offices. They act only for landlords of rural and commercial property and manage in excess of 3,000 sites throughout the UK.
The 1990’s to the early 2000’s saw operators frantically rolling out their telecoms networks throughout the United Kingdom in order to provide 2G and 3G coverage. This was in line with their licence and resulted in telecoms rents being driven up year on year.
With the market now maturing, telecoms companies are building fewer and fewer new sites. The only active network rollout programme is currently being undertaken by Vodafone and O2 and the operator’s position on rents paid for sites is therefore hardening with a resultant downward pressure being seen in the market place.
The market has also seen a cost saving network consolidation agreement entered into between T-Mobile and H3G whereby they are seeking to share each other’s infrastructure without paying anything for the privilege of so doing to their landlords.
Fisher German’s advice to landlords is that, where approached by the telecoms operators to share infrastructure, there are significant deals to be done not only resulting in improved financial terms such as additional rent or incentive payments, but also resulting in improved lease terms such as removing the operator’s rights to break their leases in the future thus ensuring continuity of income.
Chris Hicks says that the operators will pay Fisher German to advise landlords on the terms of network sharing applications.
There will be further attempts by the operators to consolidate their networks and it is likely that within a year, that Vodafone and Orange or Vodafone and O2 will announce their intentions to share each other’s networks.
The culmination of these deals will ultimately lead to a reduction in the number of base station sites in the UK, thereby producing costs savings through shared infrastructure for the operators.
Chris Hicks says: “with respect to the consolidation of H3G’s and T-Mobile’s networks throughout the UK, approximately 5,000 sites will be decommissioned with similar numbers being culled if a further two operators join forces in the future”.
Having built up an extensive comparable database, Fisher German are able to achieve amongst the highest rents for landlords throughout the UK and recently for stand alone telecoms sites in rural areas have been achieving rents of up to £7,500 per annum with up to £25,000 being paid for rooftop sites in the City of London.
For further information or advice, contact Chris Hicks on 01858 411202 or Mark Newton on 01858 411215
