Wireless carriers have mostly stopped paying for the equipment that carries a cell signal inside office buildings. Harry Klaff, the U.S. president of Avison Young, and Craig Gillespie, the CEO of Airtower Networks, described the shift where carriers now put that money into stadiums, airports and a few other venues where the subscriber numbers justify it. For other buildings, including many Class A office towers, the indoor system has become the owner's job to install and maintain. So owners are looking to recover the cost from tenants. And tenants are starting to write coverage terms into their leases in response.
The indoor system is called a distributed antenna system, or DAS. It's a set of small antennas spread across each floor. They're fed by head end equipment, which usually sits in a telecom room and boosts the signal from an outside donor antenna. Many of the same buildings also run a separate antenna system that keeps firefighters' radios working indoors.
Fire codes such as Atlanta's already make the owner test that one every year. Every coverage clause a tenant can now ask for gets checked against a test the building has to run. So cellular coverage belongs in your commercial property inspection routine, with the same kind of dated record the fire code requires for the radio system.
For about two decades, office phone and internet service followed a simple split, according to Klaff and Gillespie. Tenants bought their own wireless internet. Carriers delivered the cell signal, and they often paid for the indoor systems that carried it.
There are two ways the change now reaches a tenant. A company can sign for space with poor coverage and learn only after its buildout that the fix is a capital project nobody clearly owns. Or it can sign a lease with broad operating expense language and watch a DAS installation pass through as a cost it never expected. Either way, the complaint comes to the property manager, because the owner is the one holding the system.
The cost is moving to the owner. It's a building system you own, so its upkeep is now one of your office landlord responsibilities. Klaff and Gillespie make the same comparison from the tenant's side. They tell tenants and brokers to treat connectivity the way they treat HVAC or elevators. In their words, it's something to be "inspected, documented and warranted." Equipment in that category runs on a maintenance schedule with an inspection history. So the tenant's broker is now being coached to ask for the same history on your cell system.
The coverage standard Klaff and Gillespie recommend names each carrier. It sets a minimum signal strength across a stated share of the tenant's space and fixes how the test gets done. The test happens on the day the space is delivered and at set times for the rest of the term. The clause then works as a service level agreement the tenant can measure you against for the length of the lease. The column's authors write that "We have good service" is not data. They also point out that a system built for two carriers fails the employee who uses the third. So the first thing a coverage clause asks your building for is a carrier list and a test result.
The remedies Klaff and Gillespie recommend all start from a failed test. They want a cure period and a right for the tenant to fix the problem itself. For a significant failure, they want a rent reduction. They also want tenants to get access to the risers, rooftop and conduit on a defined approval timeline. That access lets a tenant bring in its own contractor when the owner won't act. And since a 10 year lease will outlast at least one technology cycle, they recommend terms for upgrades, carrier shutdowns and equipment replacement. Each of those terms assumes the building knows the current state of its system. With dated test results, a property manager can see a floor's signal slipping toward the lease minimum before the tenant's own test finds it.
No public count exists of how many office leases carry a coverage clause today. The column says most leases still treat connectivity as an afterthought, if they address it at all. So the clauses are more likely to show up one negotiation at a time than all at once. A slow rollout gives you time to build a test record before the first renewal that asks for one. Buildings that already hold a record are more likely to answer these questions with numbers. The column calls that a leasing advantage for owners who can document strong coverage.
Emergency responder radio coverage is the system that lets police and fire radios work inside a building. Atlanta's fire marshal requires it in new buildings. The city exempts only buildings with no more than two occupied stories, no more than 12,000 square feet and no floors below grade. The owner has to have the system installed, tested and working before the city issues a certificate of occupancy, including a temporary certificate of occupancy. Atlanta can also order the system into an existing building. The first test splits each floor into 20 test cells. Floors of 32,000 square feet or more get divided into grids roughly 40 feet on a side. So the owner of a covered building already runs a floor by floor signal test as part of fire code compliance.
Klaff and Gillespie tell tenants to keep the two systems apart. They say public safety radio is a code obligation under fire and life safety rules. Its cost shouldn't be quietly bundled into the same pass through as cellular service. You can keep the two separate on the invoice and still keep both test histories in the same inspection record. Where the two head ends sit in the same room, your engineers can check both on one trip.
Tenants judge cell coverage the way they judge the heat and the elevators. They notice whether it works when they need it. So a coverage test belongs to tenant experience as much as it belongs to building operations. The annual tests your engineers run show whether the system meets the lease. Between tests, tenants report dropped calls through a service request system, and each report gives your team a floor and a carrier to check. Commercial property management software keeps the tests and the reports in one record. In Cove, inspections and work order management run in building operations, and tenant requests come in through tenant experience. So when a broker asks about coverage at renewal, you can hand over dated test results and every complaint with its fix.
The building owner pays more often now. Carriers have pulled back from funding indoor systems outside stadiums, airports and similar venues. Klaff and Gillespie write that owners are trying to recover the cost from tenants, often through operating expenses. Tenants are starting to negotiate caps or exclusions on those costs in the lease for that reason. Whoever pays for it, the owner holds the system and has to keep it maintained.
A distributed antenna system, or DAS, carries cell signal to tenants' phones. Emergency responder radio coverage carries police and fire radio traffic. The fire code requires the radio system and sets its test schedule, while the DAS is a service owners provide for tenants. The column advises keeping their costs separate. You can still keep both test histories in one inspection record.
Yes, because the coverage clauses tenants now ask for are measured by tests. Those tests happen at delivery and at set times through the term. A building with dated, carrier by carrier results can answer those clauses with numbers. Buildings with a radio system already test once a year, so the cell test can go on the same date.