Jonathan Atkin — Analyst, RBC
Thanks very much. I'm interested, first of all, in kind of the durability of the demand drivers that you indicated in your prepared remarks around FWA and densification and coverage and so forth. Any sense as to how far that kind of takes us through end of 2025 and 2026 and the directionality around that? And then secondly, any thoughts on kind of the drivers of churn or maybe rent reduction initiatives on the part of some of your customers that occasionally comes up and how that might kind of tie into your forecasting, as well as thoughts on MLAs? Thank you.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Sure. Yeah. So on the demand drivers, all the things that we mentioned, we feel pretty good about from an extended standpoint. These things always, obviously, ebb and flow a little bit, but at the fixed wireless piece being one of those, you've obviously seen what our customers have reported and the significant growth that they're seeing in terms of subscribers there, and of course, as we've mentioned before, what each of those subscribers represents relative to the typical wireless subscriber, which is a significant amount of additional traffic, so I think the more of that that we see and their expectations in terms of the number of subscribers they expect to have three and four years from now would suggest that we're going to see significant network capacity taken up over the coming years, so I think as a long-term driver, that's definitely a positive.
Some of the other things I mentioned, obviously, the new spectrum bands being auctioned off over the coming years, that's an extended period of contribution, so each of these things and just generally, the uptake in the amount of broadband traffic that's traveling through these wireless networks is significant, and I think the more of these AI-enabled products and other things that kind of come into play, it's just going to continue to weigh on that, so I feel pretty good about the durability of it, and I think it'll continue to require investment in the networks that we will benefit from for many years. In terms of churn, I think you're asking specifically about the U.S.
Based on how you said the question, Jon, but there's no real obviously, our customers always want to pay less if they can, but there's no specific initiatives underway that would result in lowering rents on any material basis. So I think the effort for us is just around continuing to work with our customers to allow them to achieve their network goals at a price that's fair and is balanced to them, but also is fair to us in terms of the capacity that we're providing and the help we're providing. And I think we've struck that balance pretty well.
Jonathan Atkin — Analyst, RBC
Thank you.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yep.
Richard Choe — Analyst, J.P. Morgan
Hi. I just wanted to ask about the activity levels. It seems like there is a lot of colocation activity, but the revenue hasn't quite come through yet. Can you talk a little bit more about the timing there that you're expecting?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Sure. Yeah. We definitely are seeing, as I mentioned in our remarks, we're definitely seeing an increase in activity in terms of business being signed up. We also mentioned that we've seen the trend of it moving towards more new collocations versus amendments compared to what we've historically seen. That trend has continued for us, and that's great in terms of a number of aspects of it, including the number of sites that we're now engaged with our customers at. But one thing that it does do typically is delay a little bit the timing of when revenue commences because you have more new leases. It typically takes a little bit longer to start to see those leases getting installed and revenue commencing than we used to see with amendments being a bigger share. But that's really just a timing thing.
If you notice, we've left our full-year outlook for contributions from new leases and amendments the same. As we see this activity, if you look at what's been contributed in the first half of the year, it clearly indicates that the second half of the year we'll have to have greater contributions in order to meet that target that we put out there.
Richard Choe — Analyst, J.P. Morgan
Great. And a quick follow-up on the services. I mean, I noted a step up, and it's going well. And you mentioned a little bit about what's driving it, but can you give us a little bit more color on what is driving the services business?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. It's really the same thing. I mean, they're kind of related to each other, right? What we're seeing that's driving our leasing activity is also driving services. So on the site acquisition side, you have more effort to find new locations and to get more deployments done. So we're supportive there. On the construction side, which is also up significantly, that's obviously more actual work being done, particularly with some of these builds that are expanding out into the more rural areas. And we at SBA are actually doing more services work now, not just on our own sites, but on other people's sites as well. And so that's been a driver of increased activity too. And I think the more we're able to partner with our carrier customers broadly across everybody's towers, it creates a better relationship between us and them, and we can be counted on more.
Richard Choe — Analyst, J.P. Morgan
I think it helps us in the leasing game as well.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Great. Thank you.
Richard Choe — Analyst, J.P. Morgan
Sure.
Batya Levi — Analyst, UBS
Great. Thank you. Maybe just to follow up on the domestic activity, just a slight slowdown in the queue. Is that mostly rounding? And looking ahead, you mentioned that bookings growth is very strong. You had started the year strong. Are we seeing an acceleration in that growth rate? And I think in the beginning of the year, it was mostly one of the carriers that was very active. Are you seeing more broad-based activity now? Thank you.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah, so first of all, on the second quarter slowdown, it is mostly rounding. I mean, the differences were actually we round to a million dollars, but the difference is probably a couple hundred thousand dollars, and it's not really indicative of anything in particular. In terms of the pacing of activity, it definitely has increased this quarter. It was probably slightly ahead of last quarter, but last quarter was also very strong, and so we would expect that that will drive a pickup in the actual revenue, recognized, as I mentioned a moment ago, as we head into the second half of this year and into next year.
Batya Levi — Analyst, UBS
Got it. Thank you.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Sure.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Mike?
Brendan Lynch — Director, Barclays
Great. Thank you. Brendan, I just wanted to follow up on your comment about AI application growth and that being a driver. To what extent are you seeing this now? And any outlook for the relatively near term would be helpful as well.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. So Brendan, some of these comments are a little bit thematic, and they're based on conversations we have with our customers and just general traffic trends because it's hard for us where we sit in the value chain to have tremendous specificity around that. But based on conversation, based on reviews done by our own engineering folks, we are seeing a number of products start to get out there where AI is being embedded into the devices that we believe will be a strong driver of increased activity. And that ultimately, obviously, is positive in terms of the amount of infrastructure needed to support it.
Brendan Lynch — Director, Barclays
Okay. Thanks. That's helpful and then just on the Canadian asset sale, can you give any of the details about these assets in particular and why you didn't think you were going to be able to scale more meaningfully in the Canadian market and how we should interpret that for any of the other markets where you have a relatively small footprint?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah, so we've been in Canada a long time. As I mentioned earlier, it was actually the first international market that we went into 16 years ago, and so we've had a lot of time and experience there. The assets themselves were good assets. We had reasonable success in leasing them up over the years. The comment about the difficulty in growing is really about growing the portfolio size to continue to get to a bigger scale, and honestly, some of that was based on the fact that the carriers own their sites. You may have seen TELUS recently just kind of set up sort of a captive tower company with a private party investing in that, about 49% of that, and so breaking into that, particularly not being a Canadian company, was a little bit challenging, and so we built sites.
We had some modest growth there, but the ability to really move to a place where we were going to be a significant player in that market, we just found to be challenging, and really, we would have continued there and I think made reasonable progress, but it was an opportunity for us when we started exploring strategic alternatives to actually realize a valuation on our assets that was certainly much higher than our public company valuation, and so there was a financial benefit, and given what we saw as a limited ability to continue to grow our portfolio, we thought that that was the right thing to do for us financially, and I think it worked for us and the buyer because they have a local presence there and a different plan, and I think they'll be able to do well with it.
But for us, it was, I think, just a better economic choice, and it positioned us to focus on the markets where we can be of scale. On the second part of your question in terms of what it means for other markets, it doesn't mean anything in the sense that what happens here is not necessarily exactly what happens elsewhere. But all of the markets that we're in, we are looking at through a lens of what is our potential going forward. And if we're subscaling a particular market, it is something that we look at in terms of, okay, well, how can we change that dynamic in a way that is favorable to us? And if we can't see a way to do that, then yes, we would look at it.
And you've seen us exit a couple of markets, but you've also seen us expand in some of the markets where we were a little bit subscaled, particularly Central America. And I think the expansion that we've done has made us much, much stronger. So if we can find that path, we frankly would prefer to do that. But if we can't, then we'll continue to look at what our options are in terms of downsizing too.
Brendan Lynch — Director, Barclays
Great. Thank you very much.
James Schneider — Senior Anlayst, Goldman Sachs
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could maybe follow up on your comments earlier, Brendan, with respect to fixed wireless. Obviously, it seems like your customers are continuing to drive good traction there, but is the activity level you're seeing for densification going beyond the sort of single lead customer that was most aggressive originally? Has that broadened to two or three of your customers at this point from what you can tell?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yes. I would say it has broadened. We're seeing more activity expanding among each of our bigger customers. So I do think that we'll continue. What we've seen is a shift in that where I would say that there's still one customer that's probably heavier than the others at this point, but that gap is closing, and I think based on the trends of applications and the conversations we're having, I would expect that to continue to narrow, and we will see all of them very active, and fixed wireless is one driver of that, for sure.
James Schneider — Senior Anlayst, Goldman Sachs
That's helpful. Thanks. And then maybe as a follow-up, given the recent announcements from U.S. Cellular with that deal closing as well as announcements from DISH, can you give us any kind of color on, again, just sort of reaffirming the level of exposure those represent for you and any color you have in terms of planned churn or any kind of sense of whether there's any kind of change in revenue profile you expect to recognize over the next 18 months or so? Thank you.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. I mean, at this moment, there's no planned churn specifically, but just in terms of exposures on the US Cellular piece, the total revenue that we have with US Cellular is about $20 million a year. That's the total. I don't think we would expect to see all of that go away, but even if it did, it would be over a number of years. So I would expect the impact to be rather small. In terms of DISH, our total revenue with DISH is roughly around $55 million a year. That's a whole different situation. Obviously, US Cellular has sold and would have some overlap there with T-Mobile that would lead to some risk there. In the case of DISH, it's a different situation today. We continue to operate on an ongoing basis and serve them where we can. They still, in fact, sign some leases and some amendments.
And so we'll just have to see where that goes.
James Schneider — Senior Anlayst, Goldman Sachs
Thank you.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yep.
Nick Del Deo — Analyst, MoffettNathanson
Oh, hey. Thanks, guys. First question on the Millicom towers. I'm sure you've had initial conversations with the other carriers in those markets about access and that infrastructure. Can you share anything about the initial feedback you're getting and the degree to which it aligns with or is supportive of the lease-up assumptions you've made for those assets?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. It's been actually quite positive. We're very encouraged about the opportunity there. I think it may even be better than we were thinking. And if you think about it, it's pretty logical. I mean, Millicom, for the most part, in each of these markets, is the number one carrier in many of the markets. And so that would suggest that they naturally have a deeper footprint. And in order to close that gap, the opportunity to have some of those sites opened up to the other carriers, they see as an opportunity to grow and to close the competitive gap there. So that's to our benefit. So we'll continue to see how it goes. Obviously, we just closed on the majority of the sites we've bought so far. We just closed on it at the end of June.
We haven't had a ton of time there, but we certainly have been having those conversations and feel pretty good about the potential.
Nick Del Deo — Analyst, MoffettNathanson
Okay. Okay. That's great to hear. And then maybe one on Canada, but a different angle, just the use of proceeds. It looks like you're getting about $325 million, which is obviously a much more substantial chunk than you've gotten from some of the other markets that you've sold. Any specific use of proceeds you're thinking about, or should we just think of that as sort of debt reduction?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. I think you can, it's somewhat fungible, Nick. I mean, we have a variety of things that are going on. We obviously have another Millicom closing, so you could say it's used for that if you'd like. You could say it's used for debt reduction, share buybacks, dividends, whatever you want. We have kind of the pool of capital allocation, and this is just another source of proceeds that allows us to basically keep our leverage a little bit lower and manage those expenditures.
Nick Del Deo — Analyst, MoffettNathanson
Okay. Great. Thanks, Brendan.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Sure.
Ric Prentiss — Head of Telecommunication Services, and Media Equity Research, Raymond James
Good afternoon, guys. Can you hear me okay?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Hey, Ric
Ric Prentiss — Head of Telecommunication Services, and Media Equity Research, Raymond James
Hey.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. There's a little feedback first.
Ric Prentiss — Head of Telecommunication Services, and Media Equity Research, Raymond James
Can you hear me?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yes. Go ahead, Ric.
Ric Prentiss — Head of Telecommunication Services, and Media Equity Research, Raymond James
Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Just clarification. So on the Sprint churn, $50 million expected in 2026 and then $20 million thereafter, that's a grand total of $20 million thereafter, right? That's not like $20 million a year. That's the end of the Sprint churn is the $20 million that's post 2026.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
That's right. Yeah, and I would expect most, if not all of that, will be in 2027. Really, we said thereafter because the exact timing tends to change, but yes, it's a grand total.
Ric Prentiss — Head of Telecommunication Services, and Media Equity Research, Raymond James
Okay. And then back to the Canadian sale, I think you said CAD 27 million lease revenue. And was that CAD 15 million after-tax cash flow? Was that also Canadian? And is that like an AFFO type of number?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. Yes, Rick. I mean, yes. The terminology we used was probably a little funny only because AFFO obviously takes into account interest, and there's no, we really weren't counting out interest. But basically, what that represents is Adjusted EBITDA, less taxes, I guess, less Maintenance CapEx too, which is small, but basically less taxes because we're an income taxpayer up there. So it's essentially AFFO, yes.
Ric Prentiss — Head of Telecommunication Services, and Media Equity Research, Raymond James
Right, and so your comment kind of pointing to that would imply like a 30-time multiple on an AFFO-type basis up there if I'm doing the math right.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yes, that's right. In order to be totally fair, though, we will pay a capital gains tax on the gain on the sale of the assets. So it'll end up being in a mid to upper 20s is what the multiple for practical purposes will be.
Ric Prentiss — Head of Telecommunication Services, and Media Equity Research, Raymond James
Definitely up to you guys. Makes sense, but again, it just tees up the privates are paying more than publics, it seems. Help us understand as you look at your leverage. I think you've said you want to keep looking for M&A opportunities, and that's why maybe you don't go investment grade yet, but just help us understand, it seems like it's really hard to win external growth opportunities if it really is winning when you have to pay up, and just kind of as you think through longer term, the balance sheet, the debt, investment grade, and what it might mean for ultimately kind of dividend growth rates.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. I think that that's obviously a fair statement. We've been saying it feels like for many years now that there's this disconnect between public and private market valuations. And as a result, you haven't seen a ton of M&A. You haven't seen what we did in the early part of our history. I mean, forever, we were known and by design were the kind of highly levered M&A-heavy growth company. And it's been harder to be that now largely because obviously cost of debt has gone up, but we could absorb that if there was a reasonable adjustment in the valuations of assets. We just haven't seen that. And so it's caused us to have to be on the sidelines more. So yeah, I mean, it affects obviously the way we think about the future planning for our balance sheet.
You've seen our leverage come down over the last year or two. And if we can't see a place to continue to invest meaningful capital because others just are simply willing to pay more, then that results in us doing other things, whether it's buying back our own stock or even moving our debt down and moving closer towards that investment-grade rating.
Ric Prentiss — Head of Telecommunication Services, and Media Equity Research, Raymond James
What do you think you need to get investment-grade given your mix of portfolio, U.S. and Latin and Africa?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. Well, I mean, you heard Mark mention earlier that we were just upgraded by S&P. At least our corporate rating was upgraded to an investment-grade rating just last week. So I don't believe we need to do a whole lot. It's really a matter of policy and probably the mix of our debt. The secured versus unsecured debt is really probably the main thing. In terms of leverage, though, I don't think we need to do much.
Ric Prentiss — Head of Telecommunication Services, and Media Equity Research, Raymond James
Right. Right. Okay. Appreciate it. Thanks.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Sure.
Michael Rollins — Analyst, Citi
Thanks. Can you hear me now?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yes. We can hear you loud. We can hear you now.
Michael Rollins — Analyst, Citi
Great. Thanks for the question. So sort of think about maybe longer term. Can you help us with what is the right or fair level that SBA should be able to grow AFFO per share on an annual basis? And when you think about working through some of the things that you've been talking about, whether it's international merger churn, domestic merger churn, normalizing domestic leasing, absorbing a higher cost of debt, what ending are we in to get to that future annual run rate opportunity? Thanks.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Sure. Yeah. I think the biggest thing, Mike, I mean, we have some of these things obviously with the Sprint churn and even the international churn to a certain degree, although it's not that much. The biggest issue is the interest rates. We have, you know, that we have $12.5 billion of debt today. Much of that has a very low interest rate. We mentioned our average interest rate, I think, is 3.7%, and that includes some recent financings at much higher rates. So there's a lot of low-cost debt in there, which is great, but it will come due over a number of years. And that's a pretty significant headwind. If you normalize for that item, which eventually, obviously, we will get over, then you're looking at a mid- to high-single-digit AFFO per share growth rate that I would be very comfortable we could maintain.
But you ask what ending. It's hard to say what ending exactly, but we're several years really from getting to that, I believe, depending on what happens with interest rates. We may find that there's a more rapid reduction in interest rates, and that would actually help us. But even without that, our next three maturities all have a one handle on their current interest rate coupon. So you can imagine that it's a significant difference in terms of that. So as we've brought our leverage down, it's helped with that a little bit, but that's really the biggest issue. But as we move beyond that, I think the steadiness in terms of growing the business organically will continue, and we're able to operate more and more efficiently all the time. So I feel good we'll continue to grow it otherwise.
Michael Rollins — Analyst, Citi
Thank you.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Sure.
Eric Luebchow — Analyst, Wells Fargo
Great. Thanks for taking the question. Brendan, I wonder if you could talk just about the investment-grade conversation a little bit. What type of spread differential you think you could get on your debt versus potentially giving up flexibility to lever up if you see some more compelling investment opportunities down the road or opportunities to buy back your stock? How are you thinking about balancing that over the next couple of years?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. Right now, we have not gone investment grade, and part of it has been to retain that flexibility. We also have seen our leverage come down meaningfully, so that has allowed us to have a lot of capacity. I mean, you saw, obviously, we did a $1 billion deal here with Millicom, and it hardly has an impact. We have a lot of capacity. It would really only be for something really, really sizable. It's hard to change your whole policy hoping for or waiting for something of that magnitude to come along. I think as we think about it, we'll continue to look at our options as our upcoming maturities come along.
In terms of the impact on cost of debt, I think it's not huge, and it's not huge mainly because we've been an issuer of a substantial amount of our debt in the ABS market, and that has been investment-grade rated paper in that market. And so we've been able to achieve what we're very close to investment-grade type of rates through the use of that market. Where we would be able to see a benefit, I think, is on the unsecured paper. We would probably be able to see that at a better rate than what we've historically been able to get in the high-yield market. And even perhaps our term loan, we could improve slightly. But we do that math around all those things, and we think about what might it look like if we made a shift there and what are the things we're giving up.
I actually don't think we would be giving up too much, and so we continue to explore this a little bit further, frankly, because it's just naturally moving in that direction.
Eric Luebchow — Analyst, Wells Fargo
I appreciate that. And just maybe one follow-up on the domestic leasing outlook. I know you kept it stable for this year. You should be at $10 million or $11 million or so in the back half. I just wanted to think through some of the moving pieces. I know it's a little premature to talk about 2026, but based on the bookings of the last six quarters, do you see an opportunity to accelerate that further, that run rate going into 2026, or are there any other mitigating factors that we should keep in mind? Thanks.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. I think it's a little premature for me to speak to that. You're right that the run rate at the end of the year will certainly be higher, probably in that $10-$11 million range. So we'll be at a run rate leaving the year that's certainly higher than this year's contribution was. As to whether that can go higher, it certainly can, but I think it's too early. Usually, we have to see something that's in that six-month window prior to the period that we're reporting on. We feel very good about what the second half of the year looks like. It's a little harder to say with absolute certainty about next year. But the trends are good. The backlogs continue to grow. The carriers are active.
And so right now, I feel good about things, but I don't know whether that means it stays at the same level or it grows. And we'll let you know that when we give 2026 guidance.
Eric Luebchow — Analyst, Wells Fargo
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Sure.
David Guarino — Managing Director, Green Street
Thanks, Brendan. On your question about new spectrum potentially being an option, I was wondering if you could share some thoughts on how high the frequency can go before it won't propagate well from a macro tower site, and also, how quickly do you think the FCC could get all of the spectrum into the hands of the carriers if it was to be optioned?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. I think, well, certainly, the new spectrum that's talked about being auctioned as part of the bill that was recently passed in Congress. There will be different periods and different bands that we auction along the way. The stuff that's longer term that hasn't been explicitly identified, but there are bands that have been named to be considered, are the higher band stuff. I think it will propagate fine, but it will definitely require different and new radios and antennas in order to do that. So that's favorable to us. And I still believe that macro sites will be the primary way to get that spectrum deployed and used. It'll still be the most efficient way. So I think what's being talked about is still very much a macro-oriented solution. And then I'm sorry, David, what was the second part of your question?
David Guarino — Managing Director, Green Street
Just on the timing of when you think it could get in the hands of carriers?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Oh, yeah. So I think the stuff that's going to be auctioned, there's 100 megahertz that has to be auctioned by next summer, I believe, is the deadline, mid-2026. And I would expect that that piece probably would be able to be cleared in the carrier's hands within two years or so following that. The other stuff, I think, is going to be much later. Even if it's auctioned in 2028 or 2029, you're looking at several years to get it cleared. You have DOD spectrum in there. So it's probably into the next decade before we start to see that.
David Guarino — Managing Director, Green Street
Great. That's helpful. And then one quick one on the guidance lift. Sorry if I missed this. Did you say how much of the earnings guidance lift was a result of the Millicom towers closing earlier than anticipated?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
I don't know that we gave that. I think we said $16 million of revenue was due to the earlier closing of Millicom. So of the revenue increase, leasing revenue increase, $16 million of that was Millicom.
David Guarino — Managing Director, Green Street
Okay. Thanks.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yep.
Benjamin Swinburne — Managing Director, Morgan Stanley
Thank you. Good afternoon. Brendan, I'm not sure if you heard EchoStar's call on Friday, not to put you on the spot, but they announced a big LEO project. I'm not sure how they're going to fund it, but nonetheless, their pitch on the call was really about offering the satellite constellation network to carriers and making the argument that it would create more efficient network structures, particularly in rural areas where they're inefficient today given how much they have to spend on terrestrial coverage, etc. I just didn't know. I know we've talked about satellite as a player in the market and whether that is or isn't a competitor to the tower business, but this was a little bit of a new angle on it.
I was curious if you had any thoughts or any comments on how you see the growing satellite business potentially competing or not or complementing towers.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. I think, well, just generally, our belief, we spent a lot of time looking at this. As you can imagine, it's been a question that's come up for a while. And just for our own sake, we want to kind of have an informed view on it. And we're pretty comfortable that it is a complementary solution. What it really comes down to is locations that are challenging to cover economically to cover from a traditional macro standpoint. Everything could be covered that way, but the cost in some of these more rural areas where you have less POPs or it's harder to get fiber-based backhaul, that kind of thing, satellites become a pretty good solution to do that. But it's modest coverage. You can't do some of the things that you could do in an urban or suburban community with your device, but you can get basic connectivity.
So I don't really look at it as something that is truly competitive. I look at it as something that is complementary. And in the case of EchoStar, I don't know anything more about it than what they said. And I'm sure you're more informed than I am, Ben, on it. But what I gathered from that is that if they are able to come up with that solution, that that would certainly be something I would consider very favorable for the tower industry in that it's a complementary solution to go with their existing terrestrial solution and that they would be able to be somebody who could provide sort of a distinct competitive offering compared perhaps to the other carriers. And so we would be supportive of that, certainly, in whatever way we could be.
In terms of the viability of it and all that, I just don't know. I guess we'll have to see.
Benjamin Swinburne — Managing Director, Morgan Stanley
Yeah. Yep. No, makes sense. And then just a quick one on the guidance. I think there was an increase in the domestic straight-line revenue for the year versus your prior guide. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know if you talked about that in prepared remarks, but is that just a lease amendment or something that you could explain?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. What that is, yes, there was an increase there. And what that basically is, is under the, I'll just tell you straight out, under the AT&T MLA that we signed a couple of years ago, one of the things that exists in that is to the extent that they do any upgrades at any sites, there is an extension to the term of that existing lease. And so when the term is extended, it ends up having a favorable straight-line impact. So that's really what you're seeing there.
Benjamin Swinburne — Managing Director, Morgan Stanley
I see. Got it. Thank you very much.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Sure.
Michael Funk — Bank of America, Senior Equity Analyst
Yeah. Thank you for taking the question. On the call, you mentioned bonus depreciation increase in carrier cash flow. I think most of the carriers mentioned earmarking that primarily for fiber builds among other projects. Just curious if your conversations with the carriers have discussed incremental tower or wireless network builds as well?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yeah. I mean, we don't have a discussion with the carriers that's explicitly related to what they're doing with bonus depreciation benefits. But what we do talk to them about is their general network plans over the longer term and the needs that they have, which we believe will support continued network investment in the wireless side. I'm sure some of the benefits that they'll get from a tax savings will go into fiber as well. And as I said in response to a question about our own capital allocation earlier, to some degree, it's fungible. What's good about it is that there's excess cash available to them to invest broadly in their network initiatives, whether that be fiber-based or wireless. I think wireless will benefit from that too.
Michael Funk — Bank of America, Senior Equity Analyst
And just curious, an AI app comment that you made earlier as well, but your engineer is looking at the AI apps and the usage. Do you have any quantification of the increase in traffic or usage off those AI apps?
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
I do not have anything specific that I can give you now, but perhaps over time, that's something we'll be able to share more with. I think as it develops, there will be more data available on it, but it's a little premature for that.
Michael Funk — Bank of America, Senior Equity Analyst
Great. Thank you so much.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Yep.
Brendan Cavanagh — CEO, SBA Communications Corporation
Great. Thank you, Sos. Thank you to everybody for joining the call. And we look forward to following up next quarter.