Cellular Phone Towers: Hidden Investment Treasure

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In a challenging economy, leasing cellular telephone towers might turn out to be a wonderful investment. Although The Global Futurist Blog does not render tax, investment, accounting, financial or legal advice to any of our readers, these structures are landscape fixtures which are increasing in utility and value by the day. Sale-leaseback transactions might carry some wonderful annuitized income as well as some offsetting depreciation. Here's a snapshot:

You've probably seen plenty of cell towers (in increasing numbers) along the highways and major roads as you've traveled. You might've thought that they looked unattractive (or that they emitted some sort of dangerous electromagnetic energy). You might have grinned inwardly as you thought that your cellular telephone reception would begin to improve, with greater clarity and fewer dropped calls - you might've sneaked a peek at your device to count the bars (or martini stirrers, as we cellularphiles [a Lingovation] like to call them).

Maybe we were missing the most significant news of all about these high-volume, signal sending, networked beasties -- the financial and leasing aspects of use and ownership of these money mills! The article which follows might prove enticing to those of us infused with the entrepreneurial spirit.

T-Mobile nets $2.4 billion from leasing cell towers
T-Mobile USA will reap $2.4 billion from a deal to allow Crown Castle International to operate the carrier's 7,200 cell towers in a leasing agreement that expands Crown's tower total to more than 37,000. T-Mobile will earmark the funds to acquire 4G spectrum and upgrade its Long-Term Evolution network. CNET (9/28), Bloomberg (9/28)

Sounds to me to be a wonderful investment. Despite the environmental and potential physiological concerns associated with ambient electromagnetic energy given off by these signal-bouncing beacons, they are increasing in number as demand increases, and they are truly hard assets. This makes it indeed possible to lease them -- even if you're a denizen of the private sector.

As there numbers grow, and they will, some genius is going to put together a geographically-diversified, mixed carrier portfolio of these behemoths, and sell interests, either to institutions, or to individuals, but with the portfolio under duly-licensed and expert management.

Douglas E. Castle for The Global Futurist Blog, The InfoSphere Business Alerts And Intelligence Blog, The Business And Project Planning And Management Blog, The Going Totally Rogue Blog and -- the newest member of the fleet (so please visit), The CrowdFunding Incubator Blog.
 

Do it again. C'mon...

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Emerging Countries And Markets Stimulate Innovation

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Some view barriers and obstacles to business entry as deterrents; as reasons for retreat. Others view these roadblocks as challenges to their innovative and entrepreneurial capability. This latter group of block-busting entrepreneurs are creating a market disruption which may not only help grow the entrepreneurial and small business sector (the greatest historically-proven economic and employment stimulus), but which might just help to displace stodgier, older companies which have lost their ability to innovate, to pivot and to adapt.

The article excerpt which follows (courtesy of The Harvard Business Review) illustrates this point and potentiality very artfully:

How emerging-market constraints are driving innovation
To succeed in emerging markets, companies have to learn to navigate constraints absent in the developed world, writes Uri Neren. That forces firms to radically rethink their business models, with the best companies using limitations to drive far-reaching innovation processes. Harvard Business Review online/HBR Blog Network
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Part of the way in which industrialized nations with depressed economies and limited domestic opportunities can dig themselves from out of the doldrums is by better empowering smaller, entrepreneurial businesses to become more involved in exploring the global economy.

It is highly-likely that during the course of the next four years most of the smaller, more highly-adaptable entrepreneurial enterprises spawned in the now-overwhelmed and somewhat shell-shocked industrialized nations will be turning their efforts in the direction of internationalization, and will be looking toward emerging markets in emerging countries for an increasingly large portion of their revenues.

This is ironic, in that so many in these industrialized nations view joblessness as a function of outsourcing jobs to less-developed countries where labor is typically cheaper.

Viewed in the aggregate and over time, this effect is almost an economic osmosis, where employment and business opportunities on the one hand, and markets on the other, are moving toward a sort of equilibrium through increasingly efficient globalization. And smaller businesses, it would seem metaphorically, are better at penetrating barriers than their much larger, slower-moving counterparts -- those very same businesses which had grown dependent on monopolization and government largesse.

We are entering into some challenging but fascinating times for international economics and global commerce as international barriers are being hurdled at an accelerating rate.

Douglas E. Castle for The Global Futurist Blog and The Internationalist Page Blog

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CYBERWARFARE: Not "IF" But "WHEN".

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Cyberwarfare is here. There have already been attacks, both domestic and foreign in origin where a sophisticated and specialized virus was used to either steal data, destroy computer drives and systems, and, ultimately [referring to the case of the Stuxnet virus which crippled Iran's rapidly-developing nuclear facilities] targeting and destroying or neutralizing physical facilities. Consider these as warnings of our dependencies and vulnerabilities to computer-run lives.

Bear in mind that virtually all of every industrialized nation's infrastructure (i.e., power, traffic lights, communications, power plants, reservoirs, air transportation, military, police, fire departments, capital markets and almost every other thing that is essential to a civilization as we have come to know it) is completely dependent upon "nerve centers" of computers for automation and ongoing operation of everything. We have all, as individuals and as nation states, become completely dependent and addicted to computer technology.

With major international cyberwarfare (nation against nation, or groups of nations against groups of other nations divided by ideology, ethnicity, level of economic development, availability of fuels and key resources, etc.) it is not a matter of possibility, or even of probability -- it is simply a matter of when it will happen, who will initiate it, and what (or whom) the target will be.

Society's greatest enemy is also its greatest protector - the expert computer hacker. And nations invested in cyberdefense are recruiting hackers into their governments and into their military forces. What an irony. A brief article in The New York Times follows:

September 26, 2012

Cyberwarfare Emerges From Shadows for Public Discussion by U.S. Officials

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — For years, even as the United States carried out sophisticated cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear program and the Pentagon created a Cyber Command, officials have been hesitant to discuss American offensive cyberwarfare programs openly. Since June, in fact, F.B.I. agents have been investigating leaks to The New York Times about the computer attacks on Tehran.

But the reticence is giving way. The chorus of official voices speaking publicly about American cyberattack strategy and capabilities is steadily growing, and some experts say greater openness will allow the United States to stake out legal and ethical rules in the uncharted territory of computer combat. Others fear that talking too boldly about American plans could fuel a global computer arms race.

Next month the Pentagon’s research arm will host contractors who want to propose “revolutionary technologies for understanding, planning and managing cyberwarfare.” It is an ambitious program that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, calls Plan X, and the public description talks about “understanding the cyber battlespace,” quantifying “battle damage” and working in Darpa’s “cyberwar laboratory.”

James A. Lewis, who studies cybersecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says he sees the Plan X public announcement as “a turning point” in a long debate over secrecy about cyberwarfare. He said it was timely, given that public documents suggest that at least 12 of the world’s 15 largest militaries are building cyberwarfare programs.

“I see Plan X as operationalizing and routinizing cyberattack capabilities,” Mr. Lewis said. “If we talk openly about offensive nuclear capabilities and every other kind, why not cyber?”

Yet like drone aircraft, which similarly can be used for both spying and combat, American cyberattack tools now are passing through a zone of semisecrecy, no longer denied but not fully discussed. President Obama has spoken publicly twice about drones; he has yet to speak publicly on American cyberattacks.

Last week, at a public Cyber Command legal conference, the State Department’s top lawyer, Harold H. Koh — who gave the Obama administration’s first public speech on targeted killing of terrorists in 2010 — stated the administration’s position that the law of war, including such principles as minimizing harm to civilians, applies to cyberattacks.
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What are the implications for the near-term and the longer-term? The Global Futurist Blog examines them, and makes some trend-supported predictions:

1) CEOs, world leaders and the Elders of dynastic families will form strategic partnerships and alliances with skilled hackers;

2) An increased percentage of the budget of every business, government and dynastic family's income and assets will spent upon or invested in computer security;

3) The unspoken demand for hackers as either espionage participants of as security consultants will be greater (within the next 12 months) than the demand for any other type of professional or worker;

4) Government and quasi-government agencies (such as contractors) will be conducting limited cyber attack exercises on innocent civilians domiciled in their own countries and in foreign countries. There will be colossal collateral damage and a great deal of lying and whitewashing in order to cover it up by those responsible for giving the orders;

5) While true Artificial Intelligence is something that will be developed in the more distant future, a great deal of the world military's technological focus will be on combining computer science with robotics and weaponry.

Douglas E. Castle for The Global Futurist Blog, The Internationalist Page Blog and The Links 4 Life Alerts Blog.  

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Alert: CIO, CTO, COO, Programming Managers, IT Professionals, Project Managers and Strategic Planners...

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ALERT: CIO, CTO, COO, IT Professionals, Program Managers, Project Managers and Readers Of Any Blogs By Douglas E. Castle, Global Edge Media, or CrowdFunding Incubator LLC (new!):

Dear Readers and Followers:

If you are a CIO, CTO, COO, IT Professional, Program Manager or a Project Manager, selected feeds and new resources from CIO.com (the CIO Newsletter) are now being featured daily in the following Industry-Centric Twitter Accounts:

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If you are not already following the above Twitter feeds, please follow them by simply clicking on each of the links above, as appropriate.

As always, thank you!

Thank You.

Douglas E. Castle

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