The recent spate of operators offloading their tower assets has bemused Faultline for some time. Towers are old hat for video delivery, and it feels like less and less TV is consumed via terrestrial broadcast. So why are tower portfolios now commanding historic prices, and what skin does pay TV have in that game? The short answer seems to be that the current market greatly values towers, as a speculative asset that it expects to increase in value as MNOs struggle to upgrade their networks to support 5G capabilities. For operators that have struggled with cashflow, and that are not in the business of mobile networks, offloading towers to ditch a burden and inject some much-needed cash is a no-brainer.…