US tower company Crown Castle confirmed last week that it will cut 20 percent of its tower and corporate workforce.

The company said the cuts have been accelerated because of Dish Wireless's contractual default over tower rental payments.

Dish defaulted on payments to Crown Castle on its wireless infrastructure agreement with the tower company, following EchoStar's decision to sell $40 billion of spectrum to AT&T and SpaceX.

The planned layoffs come amid Crown Castle's transition to a "pure-play" tower company, as Crown Castle nears a sale of its fiber and small cells assets. Crown Castle owns, operates, and leases approximately 40,000 cell towers.

According to Crown Castle, the layoffs will generate $65 million in annualized operating cost savings. Following the cuts, the company will have around 1,250 full-time employees.

The majority of these cuts will take place by the second quarter of 2026 and be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2027.

“In 2026, we expect to offset headwinds from Dish terminations and Sprint cancellations at the bottom-line with growth in the underlying business, operating costs reductions, and lower interest expense as we repay debt using proceeds from the fiber business sale," said Chris Hillabrant, president and chief executive officer, Crown Castle.

"Due to Dish's contractual default, we have accelerated and expanded our restructuring plan to realign staffing levels consistent with the removal of all future Dish activity," he said on the company's earnings call.

For the full year 2025, Crown Castle reported site rental revenues of $4.04bn, down five percent from the previous year, though the company noted that this was down to "an unfavorable $204 million impact from Sprint Cancellations."

Crown Castle said it expects to generate site rental revenues of around $3.8bn this year.

The tower operator anticipates that the Dish terminations and Sprint cancellations are expected to be $240m for the full year 2026, including $220m of Dish terminations and $20m of Sprint cancellations.

Hillabrant noted on the company's earnings call that Crown Castle is seeking $3.5bn from Dish.