In Crown Castle’s recent Q2 Earnings report, the company has announced that it plans to reduce its office real estate portfolio and move jobs to the Houston headquarters.
In what’s welcoming news to Houston, the news is not so welcoming to regions that will lose workers. The hardest will be Canonsburg, PA (near Pittsburgh), where the company currently employs around a thousand employees.
Crown Castle owns towers, small cells, and thousands of miles of fiber. They manage communications infrastructures and offer data center services. As the company continues to grow in Houston, it has been growing the telecom industry in the city along with it. The city has long been an engineering hub, but it has been historically tied to the energy industries. The region has diversified over the years and tapped into new horizons, expanding its strengths with it. The abundant engineering talent in Houston has combined well with telecom and compute sectors.
Telecom industry struggles
The telecom industry has been hit hard since the later half of 2021 due to many factors including a cutback in spending, waves of consolidations, and increased competition from new players. More recently, Amazon announced plans to start selling cell phone service. Google has continuously grown in the space and increased their fiber portfolio.
The company broke ground on their 420,000 sq foot Houston headquarters in 2019. Since then, they have grown in the region. The consolidation is the latest local expansion by the company. Though nothing is certain, there has been mention by Crown Castle staff of a possibility to increase the Houston office footprint to accommodate
The namesake “Crown Castle” was introduced as a merger of Houston-based Castle Tower corp. and Pittsburgh based Crown Communications. Since the merger, the company has grown tremendously by expanding its portfolio and services and through strategic acquisitions such as the purchase of Light Tower and a chunk of AT&T’s tower portfolio.
