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Capabilities / Telecom

Telecom

Serving telecommunications from the ground up.

Husch Blackwell’s Telecommunications law practice is comprised of attorneys with extensive experience in all areas of communications, starting with infrastructure development, deployment, and ongoing operations, and building into regulatory strategy and implementation, transactional, and strategic activities, and business practice and policy.

Our telecommunications attorneys are knowledgeable and experienced in transactional, administrative, legislative, and governmental approval capacities, and work with all levels of government and with local and state decision makers and administrative agencies to resolve regulatory and governmental affairs issues.

Our telecommunications law attorney team routinely assists clients with complex communications business transactions involving entity formation, taxation, contract negotiations, project financing, zoning and construction, land use, real estate, wireless technology, build-out strategies and transactions, and, when necessary, litigation.

Representative Experience

  • Represented Lendlease after their request to build a wireless tower was denied by the Village of Cary, Illinois, alleging that it would impede development in the area, there was no gap in wireless coverage, and there were feasible alternative sites within the area. We demonstrated that the Village’s reasons for denial were based on conjecture and that the Village Code did not require Lendlease to prove a gap in coverage or the absence of a feasible alternative site within the area. The favorable settlement paves the way for the construction of the first privately-permitted wireless tower in the Village.
  • Counseled SKC Communication Products on an expansion investment that set the stage for future acquisitions and growth beyond the company's current states.
  • Assist the nation’s largest wireless service provider and other wireless infrastructure companies, including the largest privately held infrastructure companies in the country, in permitting and siting of wireless telecommunication facilities, negotiating real estate and other land use agreements with private property owners and municipalities for use of property and public rights of way and addressing governmental or community considerations related to the siting of wireless infrastructure.
  • Persuaded Government Accountability Office to rule in favor of our communications client, retaining their contract award, valued at over $600 million, to provide satellite bandwidth services that had been challenged by a competitor.
  • On behalf of a national IT communications and solutions provider, contested aspects of a highway project by intervening in an administrative proceeding pending with the Illinois Commerce Commission concerning a highway and bridge project proposed by the Illinois Department of Transportation and the project’s impact on two railroads. We secured an order from the state administrative commission requiring the State to pay for the relocation of fiber optic cable resulting from the IDOT highway/bridge construction and any corresponding changes in the impacted rail tracks, as well as the attorney fees.
  • Challenged municipal planning commission’s rejection of an application for a conditional use permit for Central States to build a wireless communications tower. We challenged the commission’s rejection in court, while negotiating with another wireless carrier to remove an existing tower from the property. A favorable settlement allowed Central States to build a tower able to accommodate multiple carriers.
  • Negotiated multiple agreements on behalf of Midwest Fiber Networks to provide fiber service to a facility in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. 
  • Represented Tillman Infrastructure in its real estate deployment of 35 new towers across the country.
  • Represented major wireless carrier in the deployment of traditional cell sites with 5G and small cell technologies across the country, while also negotiating with rural communities that currently have poor coverage to bring towers to their communities for internet access.
  • Secured a victory for cloud-based IT service provider in its federal lawsuit against a municipal body when a district judge granted a motion for summary judgment in a dispute over permits for cell tower construction.

I heavily rely on Husch Blackwell's advice for various scenarios and issues that come up on telecommunications sites. They are pragmatic and creative and are my go-to experts for very complicated real estate issues. I have had 100% success with Husch's work, and my attorney takes the time to explain how he arrived at the chosen path he recommends.

Manager, RE regulatory, multinational telecommunications conglomerate