Steel in the Air, INC.

Steel in the Air, Inc. - About Our Company / HOME

About Us

Name

Many clients ask us what the company name means. Steel in the Air is a wireless industry term. Essentially, back when I joined the wireless industry, there were a number of tower companies trying to convince the cell providers to lease space on their towers. These companies would hand out a list of coordinates where they allegedly had towers. The cell providers would demonstrate interest in one of the locations and submit an application only to find out that the tower company had not actually built a tower but was only trying to get interest from a wireless carrier. So the carriers started asking, "Is there steel in the air?" which meant "Is the tower actually standing?"

When forming this company, we searched for a name that was representative of the values we held as important. Steel in the Air reflects our belief that there is actually value standing behind our company and this webpage; it’s not just a set of coordinates intended to get leads.

History

An attorney by training, Ken Schmidt founded Steel in the Air after having worked in the tower industry for seven years. Having represented wireless carriers in the acquisition of cell tower and cell site locations, it became increasingly apparent that many landowners were underrepresented when it came to negotiating and dealing with cell tower lease issues. Furthermore, a review of the resources available to landowners on the web about cell towers showed that the information on the web was either misleading or outright wrong. Landowners who relied upon this information were likely to either lose the lease or be under compensated.

Thus, Steel in the Air was formed in January of 2004 to assist landowners, both public and private, with issues regarding cell tower leases. At that point, we stopped taking compensation from the wireless carriers and started helping public, private, corporate and non-profit landowners. In the last two years, we have assisted over 500 clients with various issues regarding cell towers.

Background

Ken's education includes a Bachelor of Science at Truman State University in Political Science- Pre-Law and a Juris Doctorate at the University of Florida. He has managed the development of broadcast towers nationwide and has developed and built cell towers. Ken has managed multiple 100+ site builds for wireless carriers like Nextel and T-Mobile. He has taken hundreds of cell sites through the zoning and permitting process and has leased many more.

Ken has been quoted in many newspapers and magazines like the New York Times and Bloomberg on issues regarding cell towers and has also spoken at numerous industry and non-industry conferences on cell tower related issues. He is recognized as an expert on cell tower leases and due diligence processes for tower acquisitions.