Verizon and AT&T team up for new cell towers across America

One of the biggest sticking points for anyone who has traveled cross country is that reliable mobile coverage everywhere isn’t possible. It’s especially true in the Western part of the US, where broad swaths of land go without a signal. Normally you wouldn’t expect to hear a joint announcement from AT&T and Verizon, but the two companies have teamed up with Tillman Infrastructure to get hundreds of new cell towers built across the US.

Tillman will construct these towers to suit AT&T and Verizon’s networks and these two companies will lease the towers for their networks. Neither AT&T or Verizon have announced which new areas will be covered by the cell towers, but the press statement alludes to these towers also being used to refit some older equipment. Nicola Palmer, Chief Network Officer for Verizon Wireless, says that the end goal is to reduce operating costs for both companies.

“We continue to focus on technology innovation and investing in the latest software platforms to provide the best possible customer experience on our network. At the same time, it is imperative to reduce operating costs. We are reviewing all of our long-term contracts as they come up for renewal and we are excited to develop new vendor partners to diversify our infrastructure providers.”

Verizon says construction of these towers will begin in the first quarter of 2018 and after construction is completed, engineers will begin installing equipment in order to get them operational as quickly as possible.