Telecom Tower REITs data: the federal registry, the observed grid and the listed tape, in one catalog. · Head-to-head
SBA Communications Corporate Site — Portfolio and Investor Data vs Wireless Estimator — Tower Industry News and Database
Which telecom tower reits data: the federal registry, the observed grid and the listed tape, in one catalog. data fits your job: SBA Communications Corporate Site — Portfolio and Investor Data, or Wireless Estimator — Tower Industry News and Database. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
SBA Communications Corporate Site — Portfolio and Investor Data
Wireless Estimator — Tower Industry News and Database
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | SBA Communications Corporate Site — Portfolio and Investor Data | Wireless Estimator — Tower Industry News and Database |
|---|---|---|
region | documented | not in this set |
market_country | documented | not in this set |
portfolio_milestone_count | documented | not in this set |
managed_site_locations | documented | not in this set |
report_title_publication | documented | not in this set |
rank | not in this set | documented |
company | not in this set | documented |
towers | not in this set | documented |
tower_type | not in this set | documented |
last_update | not in this set | documented |
admin_comments | not in this set | documented |
article_date | not in this set | documented |
Coverage, side by side
| SBA Communications Corporate Site — Portfolio and Investor Data | Wireless Estimator — Tower Industry News and Database | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | 15 country markets in 4 regions — United States; Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama; Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru; South Africa, Tanzania | United States only — the ownership register excludes foreign-owned portfolios outright |
| Temporal | Milestones timeline 1989 to the present; brochure statistics current to the 2025 brochure edition; publications dated 2024–2025 | News continuous since the early 2000s; fatality trackers reaching back to 2003; each tower count carries its own revision timestamp |
What each contains
They tie on 2 attributes. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| SBA Communications Corporate Site — Portfolio and Investor Data | Wireless Estimator — Tower Industry News and Database | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | SBA Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: SBAC), first-party corporate disclosure | Wireless Estimator, independent wireless-construction trade publication operating for more than two decades |
| Subject lens | One landlord telling its own story: country markets, portfolio milestones, managed locations, original tower studies | The whole US industry from outside: ranked tower companies, dated news, safety trackers, contractor directory |
| Geographic coverage | 15 country markets in 4 regions — United States; Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama; Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru; South Africa, Tanzania | United States only — the ownership register excludes foreign-owned portfolios outright |
| Temporal coverage | Milestones timeline 1989 to the present; brochure statistics current to the 2025 brochure edition; publications dated 2024–2025 | News continuous since the early 2000s; fatality trackers reaching back to 2003; each tower count carries its own revision timestamp |
| Detail level | Corporate and portfolio aggregates by country plus dated milestone events; no individual-site records published | One row per tower-owning company (276 rows) with owner-type classification and provenance notes; news at article level |
| Scale | 15 country-market pages, one milestones timeline, roughly 6 brochure and research publications; 39,000+ towers and 50,000+ managed site locations quoted | 276 companies totaling roughly 149,196 towers; American Tower 42,135, Crown Castle 40,033, SBA Communications 17,479; 1,200+ directory firms |
| Documented fields | 5 verified fields plus 3 additional families folded pending sample scoping | 8 verified fields covering register and news metadata |
| Delivery through Datadory | Daily, weekly, or hourly — your call | Daily, weekly, or hourly — your call |
| Best for | First-party footprint and scale claims attributable to a named NASDAQ-listed issuer across the Americas and Africa | US market-share math, consolidation tracking and event windows across all 276 tower-owning companies at once |
What each does better
SBA Communications Corporate Site
It goes where the US-only register cannot. Fifteen country markets across Central America, South America and Africa — Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, South Africa, Tanzania among them — make this the only record of the pair describing international tower exposure, region by region.
The figures are first-party. Portfolio totals come from a named NASDAQ-listed issuer about its own estate: 39,000+ towers, more than 50,000 managed site locations, a milestones ledger running back to 1989 including crossing 27,000 towers on joining the S&P 500. For citation work, attribution to the issuer beats aggregation every time.
It ships original research, not just counts. The publications family carries 'The Independent Tower Industry in Africa' (2024) and the 2025 Latin American Telecommunications Tower Study in English and Spanish editions — analyst-grade context no ranking table contains.
Wireless Estimator
Breadth of entities. 276 tower-owning companies against one issuer — American Tower at 42,135 towers, Crown Castle at 40,033, SBA Communications itself at 17,479, then 273 more rows down to the long tail where mid-cap landlords quietly add capacity. Market-share math needs the whole column, not one cell.
Typed, versioned, documented numbers. Every count arrives as an integer with an owner-type flag (T telecom, U utility, R railway), a revision timestamp and a provenance note naming the source of the figure. That is a panel you can diff quarter over quarter; a brochure statistic is a quote you can cite.
Depth behind the leaderboard. Two decades of dated news on transactions, litigation and carrier moves, safety fine and fatality trackers reaching back to 2003, and a directory of more than 1,200 contractors and suppliers. The publisher also publishes its own caveats — lease-rights holdings flagged in-line, DAS and small cells excluded — which makes the register unusually honest about what a tower count means.
Where they're equivalent
On the rubric they tie at 7/10 — both records document cleanly and verify, neither reaches the catalog's top tier. Both are web-native sources whose structured content Datadory normalizes into typed rows, and both carry a single dominant grain: A at portfolio-by-country level, B at company level, neither publishing individual-site records. Both also timestamp what they publish, whether as milestone years or per-row revisions. And both describe the same underlying asset class — vertical steel leased to carriers — which is why analysts keep reaching for them together despite almost non-overlapping dictionaries.
The verdict
Choose SBA Communications Corporate Site if your question is one landlord's footprint: sizing Latin American or African tower exposure, benchmarking disclosed portfolio totals against peer REIT statements, or citing a named issuer's own figures in published work. Market researchers and journalists land here first.
Choose Wireless Estimator if your question spans the industry: who holds how much of the US market, which landlords are adding rows, what the news archive says about consolidation, or how many contractors and suppliers you can prospect. Competitive-intel teams, quants and sales teams land here.
Datadory's verdict: sample both, pick by fit. The records agree on quality and disagree on nearly everything else, so returned rows will settle it faster than any spec sheet. If your question crosses borders and wants market share in the same breath, that is not a choice between them — it is a merge.
Sample both, pick by fit. See SBA Communications Corporate Site — Portfolio and Investor Data · See Wireless Estimator — Tower Industry News and Database
Or take both in one feed
Yes, and the pair is complementary by construction. The natural join is the company itself: Wireless Estimator lists SBA Communications as row three at 17,479 US towers with a revision timestamp and provenance note, while SBA's own record supplies the global context those 17,479 sit inside — 39,000+ towers overall, 50,000+ managed locations, 15 countries. Domestic rank meets worldwide denominator.
In practice: take B's 276-row register as the panel spine, attach A's country inventory and milestone ledger as issuer-side attributes, then let the news archive date-stamp whatever movement shows up. Datadory can deliver each normalized to its documented dictionary — five verified fields on the corporate record, eight on the register — alone or merged onto one calendar, daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is Wireless Estimator better than SBA Communications Corporate Site?
Better at different jobs. Wireless Estimator wins breadth: 276 ranked US tower companies, roughly 149,196 towers, owner-type flags, per-company revision timestamps and two decades of news. The SBA corporate record wins depth on one landlord: 15 countries, a milestones timeline to 1989 and first-party totals of 39,000+ towers and 50,000+ managed locations. Both score 7/10.
Do SBA Communications Corporate Site and Wireless Estimator cover the same ground?
Only partially. Both describe tower ownership, but the geographies barely intersect — one spans 15 markets across the Americas and Africa, the other deliberately restricts itself to United States infrastructure with foreign portfolios excluded. Their field dictionaries share an entity name and a notion of portfolio size and little else.
Why does SBA Communications Corporate Site claim 39,000+ towers when the US register lists 17,479?
Different measures of the same estate. The 39,000+ figure is SBA's own global portfolio statement, while the register's 17,479 counts owned or controlled US towers only, excluding foreign portfolios, DAS and small cells. Read together they bound the domestic-versus-global split.
Which dataset should an international market-sizing project start with?
Start with the SBA corporate record for the emerging-markets view — Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, South Africa, Tanzania and nine more countries with portfolio totals pinned to dated milestones, plus the 2024 Africa white paper and 2025 Latin America tower study. Add Wireless Estimator afterward for US benchmarking. Sample both before committing.
How fresh is each dataset once delivered through Datadory?
Delivery cadence is yours to set — daily, weekly, or hourly. On content: Wireless Estimator's register carries a per-company revision timestamp and a continuously updated news archive, while the SBA record moves at disclosure speed, with milestones and brochure statistics revised on the corporate calendar rather than daily.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes — separately or merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its documented field dictionary with sample rows attached for validation, and the pair joins on the company itself. Or take both in one feed.