Frequently Asked Questions

Depending on the location and height of your building, we may be able to lease the rooftop of the building for a telecommunications site.

As a landowner, you will incur no expenses whatsoever. Any expenses that occur as a result of our installation (such as electrical upgrades) will be paid by TowerSpace.

The only utility needed is electricity. Any costs or fees associated with the upgrade and continual supply of electricity to the telecommunications site will be fully paid by TowerSpace.

Rentals are based on prevailing telecommunications market conditions and capital expenditure. Property owners will receive a fixed income (with annual escalations), and can expect to make a few thousand Rand per month.

The true value is not the monthly amount but the duration of the payments you will receive, which in most cases, due to the long-term nature of telecommunications site agreements, would be for the rest of your life. You could almost look at it as a built-in pension. Note that rentals are only paid once construction of the telecommunications site begins, no payments are made before this date.

No there is not. Our business model is such that we only generate revenue when we have deployed infrastructure and have a tenant for that infrastructure installed. There is a lot of capital investment required to permit and construct a site and a lot of human capital required to secure a tenant. However, it is in our best interests to find a tenant and build the infrastructure as quickly as we can such that we can generate revenue not only for us, but for the property owner as well. As the old expression goes- You can’t catch a fish without a line in the water. The agreement is your line in the water and it is our job to catch the fish so we can both eat.

To date there is no empirical study conducted in South Africa that makes any claim that telecommunications sites affect property prices at all. Telecommunications sites have existed on properties for more than two decades now, including in exclusive neighborhoods such as Umhlanga, Bryanston and Stellenbosch. There are even telecommunications sites located inside some of the most expensive residential estates in South Africa, such as exclusive golfing estates located in Ballito, Mount Edgecombe, George, Plettenberg Bay and Waterfall.

Once we have a secured a written agreement from the landowner for a ‘site’, we market the site to all mobile network operators as well as other third-party telecommunications infrastructure providers. Should there be interest in your site, we will undertake permitting of your site, which will involve obtaining various consent approvals from branches of national and local government departments. The permitting process can take up to 24 months, but the actual construction of a telecommunications site will only take approximately one calendar month.

The type of Telecommunications Site and its height is dependent on a number of factors such as the prevailing geography of the area as well as specific land use management and building controls. You will have final say whether to proceed or not once we have presented a design specific to your property.

No. You will be compensated as per the agreement signed. We are not a network or internet provider; we are an infrastructure provider that provides services to third party customers.

You must inform potential buyers of the existence of the agreement and should the property change hands, you will notify us of the new owners such that we can update our records and cede the agreement to the new owners.

You cannot cancel the agreement unless we are in breach as defined in the agreement. The agreement is binding once fully executed. Due to the capital-intensive nature of telecommunications infrastructure, we need to ensure that our investment is safe and stable. Therefore, you must consider carefully the duration and terms before entering into an agreement.

The landowner is indemnified against any risk or claim relating to the Telecommunications Site by our Risk Insurance Provider as stated in our agreements.