Crown Castle Selling Fiber, Small Cell Businesses for $8.5 Billion

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2025 – Crown Castle is selling its long-haul fiber assets to Zayo and its small cell business to private equity firm EQT, an $8.5 billion deal in total, the companies announced Thursday. Crown Castle will retain its roughly 40,000 towers.

The company’s expecting to use cash from the transaction for $3 billion in stock buybacks and to pay down debt. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026 after regulatory reviews.

“We believe a focused, pure-play U.S. tower business will be uniquely well positioned to benefit from the anticipated consistent growth in mobile data demand,” Crown Castle CEO Steven Moskowitz said in a statement. The company is one of the largest tower owners in the country.

Zayo, owned in part by a separate EQT fund than the one acquiring the small cells, is set to add about 90,000 route miles of fiber through the deal. It’s looking to cash in on increased connectivity needs of data centers as companies lean into cloud computing and artificial intelligence. 

The fiber provider’s CEO, Steve Smith, said in January Zayo had $3 billion in “AI-related deals” in the pipeline, in addition to $1 billion signed in 2024. Lumen has been making a similar bet, with more than $8 billion in private connectivity deals with major software companies last year.

EQT is set to take over Crown Castle’s 115,000 small cell sites, which mobile carriers use for extra capacity. Zayo will provide fiber to those sites as part of “a long-term commercial agreement,” EQT said in a statement.

Crown Castle had on net invested more than $17 billion on its fiber business, which includes the small cells, over the years. The company underwent a lengthy strategic review of its fiber unit that ultimately culminated in the transaction. It had also cut back on small cell deployments last year, citing permitting delays and higher costs.

Fourth quarter results

Crown Castle also reported its fourth quarter 2024 results Thursday. The company reported a net loss of more than $3.9 billion over the year, compared to a positive $1.5 billion income in 2023.

Moskowitz forecast a 4.5 percent growth in tower revenue growth over 2025, saying on the company’s earnings call that signs looked positive for the business.

“The wireless carriers' level of activity continues to be positive as they are busy fortifying their networks with new spectrum and new equipment,” he said. “Most of the work on our sites continues to be 5G overlays. As our customers shift toward densification, we believe our towers are well positioned to capture this activity.”