Item 1. Business

Overview

We own, operate and lease shared communications infrastructure that is geographically dispersed throughout the U.S., including (1) more than 40,000 towers and other structures, such as rooftops (collectively, "towers"), (2) approximately 105,000 small cell nodes either currently generating revenue or under contract and (3) approximately 90,000 route miles of fiber primarily supporting small cells and fiber solutions. We refer to our towers, small cells and fiber assets collectively as "communications infrastructure," and, at times, to our customers on our communications infrastructure as "tenants." Our operating segments consist of (1) Towers and (2) Fiber, which includes both small cells and fiber solutions.

On March 13, 2025, management signed a definitive agreement ("Strategic Fiber Agreement") to sell our Fiber segment, together with certain supporting assets and personnel ("Fiber Business"), with Zayo Group Holdings Inc. ("Zayo") acquiring the fiber solutions business and EQT Active Core Infrastructure fund ("EQT") acquiring the small cell business ("Strategic Fiber Transaction"). Under the agreement, we will receive $8.5 billion in aggregate, subject to certain closing adjustments. The Strategic Fiber Transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026, subject to certain closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

The Fiber Business did not meet the criteria for assets held for sale as of December 31, 2024, and therefore remains presented as a component of continuing operations. As a result, this document, unless otherwise noted, does not contemplate the planned sale of the Fiber Business. Following the announcement of the Strategic Fiber Transaction and beginning with the Company's filing of Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2025, the Fiber Business will be presented as a discontinued operation, and its net assets will be classified as held for sale and comparable prior periods will be recast to reflect this change. Upon classification as held for sale, we expect to recognize a loss of between $700 and $800 million, inclusive of estimated transaction fees.

Our core business is providing access, including space or capacity, to our shared communications infrastructure via long-term contracts in various forms, including lease, license, sublease and service agreements (collectively, "tenant contracts"). We seek to increase our site rental revenues by adding more tenants on our shared communications infrastructure, which we expect to result in significant incremental cash flows due to our low incremental operating costs. We operate as a REIT for U.S. federal income tax purposes. See "Item 1. Business—REIT Status" and notes 2 and 9 to our consolidated financial statements.

Over nearly three decades, we have assembled a leading portfolio of towers predominately through acquisitions from large wireless carriers or their predecessors. More recently, we have extended our communications infrastructure presence by investing significantly in our Fiber segment. Through our product offerings of towers and small cells, we seek to provide a comprehensive solution to enable our wireless tenants to expand coverage and capacity for their wireless networks. Furthermore, within our Fiber segment, we seek to generate cash flow growth and stockholder return by deploying our fiber for both small cells' and fiber solutions' tenants.

Approximately 56% and 71% of our towers are located in the 50 and 100 largest U.S. basic trading areas ("BTAs"), respectively. Our towers have a significant presence in each of the top 100 BTAs. We derive approximately 40% of our towers site rental gross margin from towers located on land that we own, including through fee interests and perpetual easements, and we derive approximately 60% of our towers site rental gross margin from towers located on land that we lease, sublease, manage or license. The contracts for the land under our towers have an average total remaining life of approximately 35 years (including all renewal terms exercisable at our option), weighted based on towers site rental gross margin. The majority of our small cells and fiber assets are located in major metropolitan areas, including a presence in most major U.S. markets. The vast majority of our fiber assets are located on public rights-of-way.

Our largest tenants are T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which collectively accounted for approximately three-fourths of our 2024 consolidated site rental revenues. See note 14 to our consolidated financial statements for further information regarding our largest tenants. Site rental revenues represented 97% of our 2024 consolidated net revenues, of which 67% and 33% were from our Towers segment and Fiber segment, respectively. Within our Fiber segment, 66% and 34% of our 2024 site rental revenues related to fiber solutions and small cells, respectively. The vast majority of our site rental revenues are of a recurring nature and are derived from long-term tenant contracts. See "Item 1. Business—The Company" for further information. As of December 31, 2024, exclusive of renewals exercisable at the tenants' option, our tenant contracts had a weighted-average remaining life of approximately six years and represented $35.9 billion of expected future cash inflows.

As part of our effort to provide comprehensive communications infrastructure solutions, as an ancillary business, we also offer certain services primarily relating to our Towers segment, predominately consisting of pre-construction site development services relating to existing or new tenant equipment installations, including: site acquisition, architectural and engineering, or zoning and permitting (collectively, "site development services").

See note 16 to our consolidated financial statements for a discussion of the July 2023 restructuring ("2023 Restructuring Plan"), which included discontinuing tenant equipment installations and subsequent augmentations (collectively, "installation services") as a Towers product offering and (2) the June 2024 restructuring plan ("2024 Restructuring Plan," and together with the 2023 Restructuring Plan, "Restructuring Plans").

Strategy

As a leading provider of shared communications infrastructure in the U.S., our strategy is to create long-term stockholder value via a combination of (1) growing cash flows generated from our existing portfolio of communications infrastructure, (2) returning a meaningful portion of our cash generated by operating activities to our common stockholders in the form of dividends and (3) investing capital efficiently to grow cash flows and long-term dividends per share. Our strategy is based, in part, on our belief that the U.S. is the most attractive market for shared communications infrastructure investment with the greatest long-term growth potential. We measure our efforts to create "long-term stockholder value" by the combined payment of dividends to stockholders and growth in our per-share results. The key elements of our strategy are to:

*•*Grow cash flows from our existing communications infrastructure. We are focused on maximizing the recurring site rental cash flows generated from providing our tenants with long-term access to our shared infrastructure assets, which we believe is the core driver of value for our stockholders. Tenant additions or modifications of existing tenant equipment (collectively, "tenant additions") enable our tenants to expand coverage and capacity in order to meet increasing demand for data while generating high incremental returns for our business. We believe our product offerings of towers and small cells through our shared communications infrastructure model provide a comprehensive, efficient and cost-effective solution for our wireless tenants' growing networks. Additionally, we believe our ability to share our fiber assets across multiple tenants to both deploy small cells and offer fiber solutions allows us to generate cash flows and increase stockholder return.

• Return cash generated by operating activities to common stockholders in the form of dividends. We believe that distributing a meaningful portion of our cash generated by operating activities appropriately provides common stockholders with increased certainty for a portion of expected long-term stockholder value while still allowing us to retain sufficient flexibility to invest in our business and deliver growth. We believe this decision reflects the translation of the high-quality, long-term contractual cash flows of our business into stable capital returns to common stockholders.

• Invest capital efficiently to grow cash flows and long-term dividends per share. In addition to adding tenants to existing communications infrastructure, we seek to invest our available capital, including the net cash generated by our operating activities and external financing sources, in a manner that will increase long-term stockholder value on a risk-adjusted basis. These investments include constructing and acquiring new communications infrastructure that we expect will generate future cash flow growth and attractive long-term returns by adding tenants to those assets over time. Our historical investments have included the following (in no particular order):

◦construction of towers, fiber and small cells;

◦acquisitions of towers, fiber and small cells;

◦acquisitions of land interests (which primarily relate to land assets under towers);

◦improvements and structural enhancements to our existing communications infrastructure;

◦purchases of shares of our common stock from time to time; and

◦purchases, repayments or redemptions of our debt.

Our strategy to create long-term stockholder value is based on our belief that there will be considerable future demand for our communications infrastructure based on the location of our assets and the rapid and continuing growth in the demand for data. We believe that such demand for our communications infrastructure will continue, will result in growth of our cash flows due to tenant additions on our existing communications infrastructure, and will create other growth opportunities for us, such as demand for newly constructed or acquired communications infrastructure, as described above. Further, we seek to augment the long-term value creation associated with growing our recurring site rental cash flows by offering certain ancillary site development services within our Towers segment.

REIT Status

We operate as a REIT for U.S. federal income tax purposes. As a REIT, we are generally entitled to a deduction for dividends that we pay and, therefore, are not subject to U.S. federal corporate income tax on our net taxable income that is currently distributed to our stockholders. We may be subject to certain federal, state, local and foreign taxes on our income or assets, including (1) taxes on any undistributed income, (2) taxes related to our taxable REIT subsidiaries ("TRSs"), (3) franchise taxes, (4) property taxes and (5) transfer taxes. In addition, we could, under certain circumstances, be required to pay an excise or penalty tax, which could be significant in amount, in order to utilize one or more relief provisions under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended ("Code"), to maintain qualification for taxation as a REIT. For taxable years beginning before 2026, qualified REIT dividends (within the meaning of Section 199A(e)(3) of the Code) constitute a part of a non-corporate taxpayer's "qualified business income amount" and thus our non-corporate U.S. stockholders may be eligible to take a qualified business income deduction in an amount equal to 20% of such dividends received from us. Without further legislative action, the 20% deduction applicable to qualified REIT dividends will expire on January 1, 2026.

The vast majority of our assets and revenues are in the REIT. See notes 2 and 9 to our consolidated financial statements. Additionally, we have included in TRSs certain other assets and operations. Those TRS assets and operations will continue to be subject, as applicable, to federal and state corporate income taxes or to foreign taxes in the jurisdictions in which such assets and operations are located.

Our foreign assets and operations (including our tower operations in Puerto Rico) most likely will be subject to foreign income taxes in the jurisdictions in which such assets and operations are located, regardless of whether or not they are included in a TRS.

To remain qualified and be taxed as a REIT, we are generally required to annually distribute to our stockholders at least 90% of our REIT taxable income, after the utilization of our net operating loss carryforwards "NOLs" (determined without regard to the dividends paid deduction and excluding net capital gain) (see notes 2 and 9 to our consolidated financial statements). Our quarterly common stock dividend will delay the utilization of our NOLs and may cause certain of the NOLs to expire without utilization. See "Item 1A. Risk Factors" for risks associated with our REIT status.

Industry Overview

Consumer demand for data continues to grow due to increases in data consumption and increased penetration of bandwidth-intensive devices. This increase in data consumption is driven by factors such as growth in (1) mobile entertainment (such as mobile video, mobile applications and social networking), (2) mobile internet usage (supporting web browsing and trends in telehealth, remote working, online learning and other remote communications), (3) machine-to-machine applications or the "Internet of Things" (such as connected cars and wearables), and (4) the adoption of other bandwidth-intensive applications (such as cloud services, artificial intelligence and video communications). As a result, consumer wireless devices are trending toward bandwidth-intensive devices, including smartphones, laptops, tablets and other emerging and embedded devices, and U.S. wireless carriers are among the first carriers in the world to offer commercial 5th Generation ("5G") mobile cellular communications services to further support such growth.

We expect the following factors to contribute to potential demand for our communications infrastructure:

• consumers' growing wireless data consumption leading major wireless carriers to upgrade and enhance their networks through the efficient use of both towers and small cells, including in connection with 5G deployments, in an effort to improve network quality and capacity and customer retention or satisfaction;

• prior and future potential spectrum auctioned, licensed or made available by the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") enabling additional wireless carrier network development;

• next-generation technologies and new uses for wireless communications may potentially result in new entrants or increased demand in the wireless industry, which may include companies involved in the continued evolution and deployment of the Internet of Things;

• the continued adoption of bandwidth-intensive applications, including artificial intelligence, could result in demand for high-capacity, multi-location, fiber-based network solutions; and

• increased government initiatives to expand broadband infrastructure to support connectivity throughout the U.S.

The Company

Virtually all of our operations in both our Towers and Fiber operating segments are located in the U.S. For more information about our operating segments, see "Item 7. MD&A—Results of Operations" and note 14 to our consolidated financial statements. Our core business is providing access, including space or capacity, to our shared communications infrastructure via long-term tenant contracts in the U.S. We believe our communications infrastructure is integral to our tenants' networks and organizations. See "Item 1. Business—Strategy."

Towers Segment. We believe towers are the most efficient and cost-effective solution for providing coverage and capacity for wireless carrier network deployments. We acquired ownership interests or exclusive rights to the majority of our towers directly or indirectly from the largest U.S. wireless carriers (or their predecessors) through transactions consummated since 1999, including towers from (1) AT&T in 2013, (2) T-Mobile in 2012, (3) companies now part of T-Mobile in 2007, (4) companies now part of Verizon Wireless in 1999 and 2000 and (5) companies now part of AT&T in 1999 and 2000.

We generally receive monthly rental payments and, in some cases, upfront payments, from our Towers tenants pursuant to long-term tenant contracts with (1) initial contract terms generally between five to 15 years, (2) multiple renewal periods generally between five to 10 years each, exercisable at the option of the tenant, (3) limited termination rights for our tenants and (4) contractual escalations of the rental price. We strive to negotiate with our existing tenant base for longer contractual terms, which often contain fixed escalation rates.

Our Towers tenant contracts, while amended and re-negotiated over time, have historically led to a long-term relationship with tenants on our towers, resulting in a retention rate generally between 98% and 99% each year. In general, each renewable tenant contract automatically renews at the end of its term unless (1) the tenant provides prior notice of its intent not to renew or (2) the contract is amended or re-negotiated. See "Item 1A. Risk Factors" for additional information regarding higher non-renewals (which we define as the reduction in site rental revenues as a result of tenant churn, terminations and, in limited circumstances, reductions of existing lease rates) expected as a result of the T-Mobile and Sprint network consolidation. See note 3 to our consolidated financial statements for a tabular presentation of the minimum rental payments due to us by tenants pursuant to tenant contracts without consideration of tenant renewal options as of December 31, 2024.

The average monthly rental payment from a new tenant added to towers can vary based on (1) aggregate tenant volume, (2) the location of the tower, or (3) the amount of tower and ground space leased to a tenant, which can be influenced by the quantity, size, and weight of the tenant's antenna installation or related equipment. When possible, we seek to receive rental payment increases in connection with tenant contract amendments, pursuant to which our tenants add antennas or other equipment to our towers or ground space on which they already have equipment pursuant to preexisting tenant contracts. Our Towers tenant contracts and pricing are not influenced by whether or not we perform the site development services.

As of December 31, 2024, the average number of tenants (calculated as a unique license together with any related amendments thereto) per tower was approximately 2.4.

Fiber Segment. Our Fiber segment consists of communications infrastructure offerings of small cells and fiber solutions.

• Our small cells offload data traffic from towers and bolster our tenants' network capacity where data demand is the greatest and are typically attached to public right-of-way infrastructure, including utility poles and street lights.

• We offer fiber solutions to large wireless carriers and organizations with high-bandwidth and multi-location demands. Our fiber solutions provide essential connectivity resources needed to create integrated networks and support organizations.

Most of our fiber assets were acquired through transactions dating back to 2012, with the largest transactions occurring in 2017. Our fiber assets include those we acquired from LTS Group Holdings LLC, Inc., Wilcon Holdings LLC and FPL FiberNet Holdings, LLC and certain other subsidiaries of NextEra Energy in 2017, Quanta Fiber Networks, Inc. in 2015, and NextG Networks, Inc. in 2012.

We generally receive monthly recurring payments and, in some cases, upfront payments, from our Fiber tenants pursuant to tenant contracts with initial terms that generally vary between one to 20 years. The average monthly rental payment from a new tenant can vary based on the amount or cost of (1) construction for initial and subsequent tenants, (2) fiber strand requirements and supply, (3) equipment at the site, (4) the market in the U.S. where the fiber is located and the competition thereof and (5) any upfront payment received.

Additional Site Rental Information. For both our Towers and Fiber segments, we have existing master agreements with our largest tenants, including T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Such agreements provide certain terms (including economic terms) that govern underlying contracts (entered into during the term of the master agreements) regarding the right to use our communications infrastructure by such tenants.

Approximately 40% of our site rental costs of operations consists of Towers ground lease expenses, and the remainder primarily includes fiber access expenses (primarily leases of fiber assets and other access agreements to facilitate our communications infrastructure), repairs and maintenance, employee compensation or related benefit costs, property taxes, and utilities. Assuming current leasing activity levels, our cash operating expenses generally tend to escalate at approximately the rate of inflation. We seek to add tenants to our existing communications infrastructure at a low incremental operating cost,

delivering high incremental returns to our business. Once constructed, our communications infrastructure requires minimal sustaining capital expenditures, including maintenance or other non-discretionary capital expenditures, which are typically between 1% and 2% of net revenues. See note 13 to our consolidated financial statements for a tabular presentation of the rental payments we owe to landlords pursuant to our operating lease agreements.

Services. As part of our effort to provide comprehensive communications infrastructure solutions, as an ancillary business, we also offer certain services primarily relating to pre-construction site development services in our Towers segment. See note 16 to our consolidated financial statements for a discussion of the July 2023 restructuring plan, which included discontinuing installation services as a Towers product offering. In 2024, our services and other revenues primarily related to site development services. We seek to grow our services revenues by capitalizing on (1) increased leasing volumes that may result from carrier network upgrades, (2) promoting site development services, (3) expanding the scope of our services, and (4) focusing on tenant service and deployment speed. We do not always provide the site development services for our tenants on our communications infrastructure as other service providers also provide these services (see also "—Competition" below). Typically, our site development services are non-recurring and are billed on a fixed fee basis, and the terms and pricing of site development services are negotiated separately from our tenant contracts.

Customers. Our Towers customers are primarily comprised of large wireless carriers that operate national networks.

Our Fiber customers generally consist of large wireless carriers and organizations with high-bandwidth and multi-location demands, such as enterprise (including healthcare and financial), wholesale, government and education institutions.

Our three largest tenants are T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Collectively, these three tenants accounted for approximately three-fourths of our 2024 site rental revenues. See "Item 1A. Risk Factors" for risks associated with our dependence on a small number of customers and note 14 to our consolidated financial statements. For 2024, our site rental revenues by tenant were as follows:

Sales and Marketing. Our sales organization markets our communications infrastructure with the objective of contracting access with tenants to existing communications infrastructure or to new communications infrastructure prior to construction. We seek to become the critical partner and preferred independent communications infrastructure provider for our tenants and increase tenant satisfaction relative to our peers by leveraging our (1) existing unique communications infrastructure footprint, (2) tenant relationships, (3) process-centric approach, (4) technological tools and (5) construction capabilities and expertise relative to the Fiber segment.

Our sales team is organized based on a variety of factors, including tenant type (such as large wireless carriers, vertical customers and organizations), product offering and geography. A team of national account directors maintains our relationships with our largest tenants. These directors work to develop new business opportunities, as well as to ensure that tenants' communications infrastructure needs are efficiently translated into new contracts for our communications infrastructure. Sales personnel in our local offices develop and maintain relationships with our tenants that are expanding their networks, entering new markets, seeking new or additional communication infrastructure offerings, bringing new technologies to market or requiring maintenance or add-on business. In addition to our full-time sales or marketing staff, a number of senior-level employees spend a significant portion of their time on sales and marketing activities and call on existing or prospective tenants.

Competition. We face competition for site rental tenants from various sources, including (1) other independent communications infrastructure owners or operators, including competitors that own, operate, or manage towers, rooftops, broadcast or transmission towers, utility poles, fiber (including non-traditional competitors, such as cable providers) or small cells, (2) tenants who elect to self-perform or (3) new alternative deployment methods for communications infrastructure.

Some of our largest competitors in the Towers segment are American Tower Corporation and SBA Communications Corporation. Our Fiber segment business competitors can vary significantly based on geography. Some of the larger competitors in the Fiber segment include other owners of fiber, tenants who elect to self-perform and recent and potential entrants into small cells and the fiber solutions business. We believe that location, existing communications infrastructure footprint, deployment speed, quality of service, expertise, reputation, capacity and price have been and will continue to be the most significant competitive factors affecting our businesses. See "Item 1A. Risk Factors" for a discussion of competition in our industry.

Competitors to our services offering can include site acquisition consultants, zoning consultants, real estate firms, right-of-way consulting firms, construction companies, tower owners or managers, radio frequency engineering consultants, our tenants' internal staff or contractors, or telecommunications equipment vendors who can provide turnkey site development services through multiple subcontractors. We believe that our tenants base their decisions on the outsourcing of services on criteria such as a company's experience, record of accomplishment, reputation, price and time for completion of a project.

Environmental, Social and Governance ("ESG")

Our shared communications infrastructure model results in the use of fewer resources, including water, energy, metals and other materials, than would otherwise be needed to construct and maintain communications infrastructure under a single-tenant infrastructure model. We are committed to operating responsibly and ethically and considering social and environmental impacts as we make business decisions. We currently maintain annual sustainability targets in our senior unsecured credit facility. Further, we have a goal to be carbon neutral for 2025 in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by continuing to invest in energy reduction initiatives, sourcing renewable energy, and, to a lesser extent, utilizing carbon credits or offsets. We plan to continue investing in projects that are both good for our business and good for the environment.

The Nominating, Environmental, Social and Governance Committee assists the board of directors with ESG oversight. Our executive management team and senior management keep our board of directors apprised of our ESG priorities, goals and initiatives. Together, our board of directors and executive management team define our strategic approach to managing actual and potential impacts of significant ESG risks and opportunities.

Additional information regarding our sustainability initiatives and progress is also available through the Investors section of our website at https://investor.crowncastle.com. The information on our website, including our ESG Reports, is not, and shall not be deemed to be, incorporated by reference into this 2024 Form 10-K or any other filings with the SEC unless expressly noted in any such other filings.

Human Capital

The people who work for Crown Castle are essential to our ability to execute on our strategy. As of January 31, 2025, we employed approximately 3,900 people, all of whom were based in the U.S. From time to time, we also add contingent workers to support our business.

We believe attracting, developing and retaining talented employees is paramount to serving our customers and our communities and creating value for our stockholders. We also periodically conduct company-wide employee surveys to help us understand how they feel about working at our company and track the results to inform our human capital strategies. We focus on building and retaining a strong and innovative workforce with a variety of backgrounds, experiences and points of view.

The well-being of our employees is a crucial element of our safety culture, employee engagement and productivity. We offer a comprehensive total rewards package which includes market-based pay, performance-based annual incentive awards, healthcare and retirement benefits, mental health benefits, parental and family leave, holiday and paid time off and tuition assistance. We further invest in our employees' professional growth and development by providing resources and opportunities to hone their skills and expand their subject-matter expertise, which empowers them to advance their careers and enables our business to prosper.

We are not a party to any collective bargaining agreements and have not experienced any strikes or work stoppages. See "Item 1A. Risk Factors" and note 16 to our consolidated financial statements for further discussion of our Restructuring Plans, which resulted in a reduction of total employee headcount.

Regulatory and Environmental Matters

We are required to comply with a variety of federal, state and local regulations and laws in the U.S., including FCC and Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA") regulations and those discussed under "—Environmental" below. To date, we have not incurred any material fines or penalties or experienced any material adverse effects to our business as a result of any domestic or international regulations, including any environmental regulations. The summary below is based on regulations currently in effect, and such regulations are subject to review or modification by the applicable governmental authority from time to time. If we fail to comply with applicable laws and regulations, we may be fined or lose our rights to conduct some of our business.

Federal Regulations. Both the FCC and the FAA regulate towers used for wireless communications, radio, or television broadcasting. Such regulations control the siting, construction, modification, lighting, and marking of towers and may, depending on the characteristics of particular towers, require the registration of tower facilities with the FCC and the issuance of determinations confirming no hazard to air traffic. Wireless communications devices operating on towers are separately regulated and independently licensed based upon the particular frequency used. In addition, the FCC and the FAA have developed standards to consider proposals for new or modified tower or antenna structures based upon the height or location, including proximity to airports. Proposals to construct or to modify existing tower or antenna structures above certain heights are reviewed by the FAA to ensure the structure will not present a hazard to aviation, which determination may be conditioned upon compliance with lighting or marking requirements. The FCC requires its licensees to operate communications devices only on towers that comply with FAA rules and are registered with the FCC, if required by its regulations. Where tower lighting is required by FAA regulation, tower owners bear the responsibility of notifying the FAA of any tower lighting outage and ensuring the timely restoration of such outages.

State and Local Regulations. The U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996 amended the Communications Act of 1934 to preserve state and local zoning authorities' jurisdiction over the siting of communications towers and small cells. The law, however, limits state and local zoning authority by prohibiting actions by such authorities that discriminate between different service providers of wireless communications or prohibit altogether (actually or effectively) the provision of wireless communications. Additionally, the law prohibits state and local restrictions based on the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent the facilities comply with FCC regulations.

Local regulations include city and other local ordinances (including subdivision and zoning ordinances), approvals for construction, modification and removal of towers and small cells, and restrictive covenants imposed by community developers. These regulations vary greatly, but typically require us to obtain prior approval from local officials. Local zoning authorities may render decisions that prevent the construction or modification of towers or small cells, or place conditions on such construction or modifications that are responsive to community residents' concerns regarding the height, visibility, or other characteristics of such infrastructure. Over the last several years, the FCC has adopted regulations and 32 states have passed legislation intended to expedite and streamline the deployment of wireless networks, including establishing presumptively reasonable timeframes for reviews by local and state governments. Notwithstanding such developments, decisions of local regulatory authorities and utilities in certain jurisdictions may continue to adversely affect deployment timing and cost.

Certain of our subsidiaries hold state authorizations, including authorizations to act as competitive local exchange carriers ("CLECs"), to provide intrastate telecommunication services in addition to FCC authorization to provide domestic interstate telecommunication services. State authorizations may help promote access to public rights-of-way, which is beneficial to the timely deployment of fiber and small cells, and often allow us to deploy such infrastructure in locations where zoning restrictions might otherwise delay, restrict, or prevent building or expanding traditional wireless tower and rooftop sites. See "Item 1A. Risk Factors" for additional information regarding rights to our infrastructure.

Environmental. We are required to comply with a variety of federal, state and local environmental laws and regulations protecting environmental quality, including air and water quality, and wildlife. To date, we have not incurred any material fines or penalties or experienced any material adverse effects to our business as a result of any domestic or international environmental regulations or matters. See "Item 1A. Risk Factors" for additional information regarding compliance with laws and regulations.

The construction of new towers and small cells or, in some cases, their modification in the U.S. may be subject to environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended ("NEPA"), which requires federal agencies to evaluate the environmental impact of major federal actions. NEPA regulations require applicants to investigate the potential environmental impact of the proposed tower or small cells construction. If the FCC determines that the proposed tower or small cells construction or modification presents a significant environmental impact, the FCC is required to prepare an environmental impact statement, which is subject to public comment. Such determination could significantly delay the FCC's approval of the construction or modification.

Our operations are also subject to federal, state and local laws and regulations relating to the management, use, storage, disposal, emission, or remediation of, or exposure to, hazardous or non-hazardous substances, materials, or wastes. As an owner, lessee, or operator of real property, we are subject to certain environmental laws that impose strict, joint-and-several liability for the cleanup of on-site or off-site contamination relating to existing or historical operations; or we could also be subject to personal injury or property damage claims relating to such contamination. In general, our tenant contracts prohibit our tenants from using or storing any hazardous substances on our communications infrastructure sites in violation of applicable environmental laws and require our tenants to provide notice of certain environmental conditions caused by them.

We are subject to Occupational Safety and Health Administration and similar guidelines regarding employee protection from radio frequency exposure. In recent years, the scientific community has extensively studied low-level radio frequency emissions to determine whether they have any connection to certain negative health effects, such as cancer.

We have compliance programs and monitoring projects designed to promote compliance with applicable environmental laws and regulations. Nevertheless, there can be no assurance that the costs of compliance with existing or future environmental laws will not have a material adverse effect on us.

Available Information

We maintain a website at www.crowncastle.com. Our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K (and any amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended ("Exchange Act")), proxy statements and other information about us are made available, free of charge, through the Investors section of our website at https://investor.crowncastle.com and at the SEC's website at http://sec.gov as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC.

In addition, our Corporate Governance Guidelines, Proper Business Practices and Ethics Policy, Financial Code of Ethics, and the charters of our Audit Committee, Compensation and Human Capital Committee and Nominating, Environmental, Social and Governance Committee are available through the Investors section of our website at https://investor.crowncastle.com, and such information is also available in print to any stockholder who requests it. We intend to post to our website any amendments to or waivers from each of the Business Practices and Ethics Policy and Financial Code of Ethics applicable to our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Controller that are required to be disclosed.