A Story of Owning Change

The proposition:Uncrossing wires

Our client was expanding their customers’ cell service and data bandwidth, dominating the landscape by contracting with turf vendors to rapidly build or modify cell sites around the country. The vendors would estimate the equipment needed to build and bill our client for those components post-install. But the third-party company our client relied on to review each site wasn’t verifying the accuracy of the invoices vs. what was actually being built. The gaps in communication between the contract vendors, third-party reviewers and our client meant the company was frequently unknowingly overbilled.

Our proposal:Towers of strength

Our client partnered with us to true-up and close out their cell sites in Northern California. We scaled up to complete thousands of true-ups in our client’s Northern California market, and retroactively reviewed more than 2,300 cell sites before expanding into Southern California. Ultimately, we found our client was overpaying by an average of 31 percent per cell site. By streamlining processes and staying on top of their vendors, we helped them decrease per unit costs by 21 percent. On average, we helped our client save $12 million annually—this surplus savings was then applied toward building 12 additional cell sites per year.

Powerful partnership:Surging ahead, together

Truing-up their cell sites helped improve connectivity—and strengthen customer loyalty. But not long after, the rise of 5G technology and increase of cellular data pushed our client to think even bigger.

Enter small cell sites: efficient sites that have hundreds of nodes attached to light poles instead of big, bulky lattices. Determined to push through to the forefront of industry innovation, we helped our client deploy small cell sites throughout their West Coast region by managing implementation, site acquisitions and zoning, logistics with municipalities and vendor management.