Mobile phone mast sharing

[ford4000]

Vodafone want to share their mast on our property with another telecommunications company, and upgrade the site to 4G , wondering if other people have got a rent increase when this happened on their land ?
Cheers

 

[Philip Watkins]

Check your contract. As they are asking I would guess a rent increase will be forthcoming

 

[ford4000]

Ok cheers, it will be different for different contracts then

 

[rob1]

We have an one 2 one mast but when they "joined" up with orange they just said that they were now one company and didnt need to pay any more, strangely they wanted my "permission", which if they didnt need it why ask? Anyway I refused until they agreed to pay more, they then served a notice on me demanding my agreement I told them to feck off as I would never agree to them "sharing" without extra payment, I have never signed to agree to them sharing but it appears that the law says they can anyway as the government wants better coverage, maybe one day a class lawsuit will be started to make them pay and as long as I havent sign I can claim.

Had a chap come to repair ours back in the summer from a firm that seems to do most masts from all the different companies and he said that this is a common trick and lots are demanding a reduction in rents too, he said that it costs them a fortune to move masts and his advice was to tell them to remove it as they very rarely do and give up trying to get it cheaper

Hopefully you will get extra dosh but dont hold your breathe

 

[ford4000]

Thanks for your reply, from what I can gather Vodafone and O2 are not merging but are sharing sites. They need my permission to run a fibre optic cable across my fields before they can carry on, I'll dig out the contract tomorrow

 

[Kidds]

The usual advice is to get an agent and get the mast owners to pay for one.

 

[Jim t]

I know this is a very old thread. I have a phone mast on the farm and id like to find out if it is being shared by one of the other 3 providers? EE currently operate it

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

I know this is a very old thread. I have a phone mast on the farm and id like to find out if it is being shared by one of the other 3 providers? EE currently operate it

How many antennae on it? I don't belive they share them (you see lots of high value urban sites fair bristling with antennae).

 

[Jim t]

thanks for that, I’ll take pictures tomorrow and post them

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

I read through the whole Telecomms Code last night. When was your agreement signed? If 2017 or later then they DO have the right without paying you.

 

[Jim t]

See attached pictures of the phone mast, it was constructed in 2004 can’t find anywhere to say it’s a shared site or not

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

See attached pictures of the phone mast, it was constructed in 2004 can’t find anywhere to say it’s a shared site or not

It doesn't look shared to me. The arrowed bits are the antennae and 3 are usual for each occupier in my experience.

 

[SavannahT]

In the early days, the rent/lease for land was high, it worked very well dealing direct, what has altered it all is the agents in the middle, who are normally estate agents who have seen another way to earn, so yes, good for the land owner initially if the agent does not get too greedy, which most of them are, unless they are from a comms background (no estate agent is) then beware as you are only giving them the cream, always go for a company that is solely a comms derived one ie, the guys that worked for Cellnet or Vodafone in the early days have all the contacts and experience an estate agent won't have.
I can email you info for such companies who we use (direct) they are not estate agents or derived from them....

 

[SavannahT]

I have spoke with other land owners, who from BAD advice from their agents ended up with the telcos giving notice and the land owner has ended up with zero!!!!

 

[Classichay]

I have spoke with other land owners, who from BAD advice from their agents ended up with the telcos giving notice and the land owner has ended up with zero!!!!

Surely they have to restore the site as it was prior to installation which wouldn’t be cheap

 

[vantage]

How much would a new shared mast be worth?

 

[fermerboy]

See attached pictures of the phone mast, it was constructed in 2004 can’t find anywhere to say it’s a shared site or not

EE masts usually only share with 3, often they use the same antennas so not sharing a mast as such just two operators using the same system. O2 and Vodafone have a similar arrangement.
You could try a site like www.mastdata.com you can usually see if there are two operators on a mast.

That one has a dish on it which means it either beams the signal to another site that has a hard connection to telecom grid or that one has the hard connection.
The only other antennas I've seen on EE masts are for the police Airwave network, usually 3 extra poles sticking upwards similar to the single one you have.

 

[SavannahT]

Surely they have to restore the site as it was prior to installation which wouldn’t be cheap

Their budget for decomm if a site is duplicated, such as EE (BT) taking over Orange and Mercury is pre-planned, years before. We usually get them to leave infrastructure up. There are always ( or were) wireless internet companies knocking about, but now fibre is rolling out, the wireless side will be dying. So, excuse the pun, MILK it whilst you can and dont rely on the estate agents to negotiate for you, they really do end up making errors. We use, as mentioned, ex cellnet/voda guys who have companies, they know loads more that the self appointed telecoms section in the estate agents.

 

[Glen Lad]

I have Vodafone and O2 on same mast ,my income is 5750 per year the rent review is past due .It is rent review every 5 years but i have not asked the ? as i thought it
would be a waste of time engaging with them. It is on a 20 year lease, 6 or 7 years in any advice would be great.

 

[Kidds]

I have Vodafone and O2 on same mast ,my income is 5750 per year the rent review is past due .It is rent review every 5 years but i have not asked the ? as i thought it
would be a waste of time engaging with them. It is on a 20 year lease, 6 or 7 years in any advice would be great.

My advice would be to keep quiet. They are likely to be very keen to review the price down quoting all sorts of reasons and they are usually very good at getting it too.
Keep quiet and just keep taking the money while you can, I don't think it will ever be reviewed upward.

I am no expert but I do have experience.