Tower Transaction

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2024

Other Liabilities [Abstract]

Tower Transaction

NOTE 18. TOWER TRANSACTION

In December 2013, we closed our transaction with Crown Castle International Corp. (Crown Castle) in which Crown Castle gained the exclusive rights to lease and operate 9,048 wireless towers and purchased 627 of our wireless towers for $4,827 in cash. The leases have various terms with an average length of approximately 28 years. As the leases expire, Crown Castle will have fixed price purchase options for these towers totaling approximately $4,200, based on their estimated fair market values at the end of the lease terms. We are subleasing space on the towers from Crown Castle over an estimated original term of 20 years, at current market rates, subject to further optional renewals in the future.

We determined that we did not transfer control of the tower assets, which prevented us from achieving sale-leaseback accounting for the transaction, and we accounted for the cash proceeds from Crown Castle as a financing obligation on our consolidated balance sheets. We record interest on the financing obligation using the effective interest method at a rate of approximately 3.9%. The financing obligation is increased by interest expense and estimated future net cash flows generated and retained by Crown Castle from operation of the tower sites, and reduced by our contractual payments. We continue to include the tower assets in “Property, Plant and Equipment – Net” on our consolidated balance sheets and depreciate them accordingly. At December 31, 2024 and 2023, the tower assets had a balance of $608 and $647, respectively. Our depreciation expense for these assets was $39 for each of 2024, 2023 and 2022.

Payments made to Crown Castle under this arrangement were $269 for 2024. At December 31, 2024, the future minimum payments under the sublease arrangement are $274 for 2025, $280 for 2026, $285 for 2027, $291 for 2028, $297 for 2029 and $1,389 thereafter.