What is the total deployment cost of US wireless telephone infrastructure?

June 11, 2008 3:02 PM

What is the total deployment cost of US wireless telephone infrastructure?

I am trying to figure out the total costs of US cell phone infrastructure over time. How much has the industry spent in siting and building towers, maintenance, wireless-specific backhaul, etc? I just need a rough estimate somewhere that I can cite, but am coming up dry.

Thanks!

posted by yesno to Technology (3 answers total)

Check the annual reports / 10K records for publicly-traded cellular carriers. Their capital expenditures will be almost completely cell phone infrastructure. They'll certainly go into some detail on what they're spending.
posted by GuyZero at 3:53 PM on June 11, 2008

Are you going to count infrastructure that they put up 10 years ago that they are now paying to decommission? (Like analog.)
posted by gjc at 4:39 PM on June 11, 2008

Response by poster: Yeah, I was just looking to find out the number that they have spent on infrastructure overall, including costs deploying now-obsolete technology and the costs associated with decommissioning that equipment.
posted by yesno at 6:00 AM on June 12, 2008