This deal started off in 2004, kinda casually with the ISP I had a dial up account with. They were starting to do some wireless and I contacted them as I own the highest elevation private pc of land in the county.
They came looked, said 'we need a road'.....so I built a mile of road up there. Then they provided the materials and some help, together we built the tower. We ran an electric line that runs 2300' down the side of the mountain to my shop (in a conduit laid on the ground) for power.
I got free internet was the only payment....which going from 56k dialup (DSL wasn't even available then) to a 10mb connection was worth it to me. Worked great for several years, then the ISP owner got off into other things and turned the business over to his son, who has run it in the ground, near as I can tell. Things would break down, I'd either fix them or it wouldn't get done, they never developed a customer base on this tower, etc, and finally one day they were history.
The tower sat unused from around 2009 to 2015 (we used phone co DSL which had become 'sorta' available.....528k on days it didn't rain or ants....literally....get in the phone boxes) when a small, local startup bunch contacted me about the tower. Given I'd heard nothing from the original bunch about it, and possession being 9/10's of the law, I figure it's mine....given the road I built, the labor I put in and letting it sit there for years. Scrap value of it wouldn't be worth the effort to get it.
So, we worked out a deal for them to use it. They spent a bunch on upgrading the tower, put a whole new, heavier section on the heavy 50' base part, all new radios/ant/etc and got a decent marketing plan going (they have 3-4 other towers locally now). I think these guys will make it, business wise.
So, going in, not to hit them too hard, I agreed to a 5 year, $1200/yr, with a 10% increase each following 5 yr renewals, plus my connection of 40mb is no charge. January starts the 3rd year.
I provide 10KWHrs/day of electric with that metered by a revenue grade meter on the line to the tower, anything in excess of that billed at the current commercial rates...which they haven't exceeded so far, though it is getting close now. Works out to 400 watts/hr, and the radios they use are not huge.
Last I knew of, they had around 100 customers on this tower, paying an average of $40-50/mo (I'm guessing based on their rate tier), so the rent isn't hitting them too hard....and I'm not trying to make a killing on the deal, just help me out some with property tax, and of course, a good, reliable, high speed (enough for me anyway....streaming Netflix is probably my biggest use) connection is the biggest deal. Considering I went from
paying the phone company $720/yr for a crappy service to
making $1200/yr, that's my kind of swing.
Building that tower was a royal pain, due to the location....the terrain is near straight up ( elevation changes from 2200' at my house to 3,000' on the top), the road had to go a long way around to even come close to getting up there, and so on.....just a big pain all the way around. IF you have a better access, throwing up a light weight Roan tower isn't a huge deal. You might consider it just for the connection until they get a customer base up, then renegotiate. I wouldn't consider the "agreement goes with the place" language though, they really would have nothing it it.
AND you might consider getting in the ISP business. From what I can tell with these guys, it ain't rocket science......were I a lot younger man, I'd do it. I don't know what their expenses, like the cost to hook into the Sprint fiber main line, but looks like a pretty fair potential for profit based on the gross numbers.
From the tower looking east, down on my farm, and valley I live in:
Looking back toward the west:
