The E Man
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Cell towers pull in several thousand a month in rent (assuming they're got a good number of tenants) but that's not what they're going to pay you to lease your land. If you tell them you want thousands of dollars a month they will go somewhere else unless you're in a hot area and their last resort (you probably aren't). I would see them paying a couple thousand a month in an area of Cary with something of a dead zone, and unless you're in a similar area I'd only expect a modest increase over what they've already offered. A thousand a month is the max I'd expect them to pay anywhere that isn't an incredibly under-served or very urban area.
For the long-term, consider that the tower may have to be modified or reinforced over its life span, so from time to time there may be small construction crews on-site performing various types of work on the tower (with varying levels of noise). This would only be for (at most) a few weeks at a time and hopefully only once a year at most (and only several years after the tower is built, assuming this carrier can even get the tower to max capacity). I would consider asking the company how many carriers the tower will be built to support. I would expect an answer of 4-6 if it's a big tower company like American Tower or Crown Castle. They will probably inspect the tower every 4-8 years and perform annual maintenance on it in the form of changing out light bulbs and strobe lamps (the tower they want to build is over 200 ft tall, which I think is the FAA minimum for lighting up a tower). They will likely leave you alone and I recommend finding a spot on your property where they can enter and exit without disturbing you (i.e. don't give them a driveway easement that runs right past your house). From time to time the company's field operations technicians may be on-site with a possible tenant to do a site walk and determine if they have space for the tenant in their leased compound area, if there's room on the tower, etc.
The initial lease they offer you may only be for X years, but they will probably come back regularly and renew this lease so look at it as a very long term thing. See if there are provisions in the lease to scale up the rent they pay you over time based on various economic factors. The company I work for has tower leases going back to the 1940s (the old AT&T long lines towers that were supposed to survive indirect nuclear blasts) and we're still paying people and renewing leases. Terrestrial communications towers aren't going anywhere, and demand has only increased as these higher bandwidth 4G systems apparently don't quite have the range of the older cellular technologies (so more towers are needed). Once you have a tower built, that land becomes very valuable to the company because rebuilding a tower isn't cheap and the interruption in service will piss off your tenants. Don't think that you can then strong-arm them when your lease is up as they will probably tear down the tower and rebuild it a few hundred feet away on an adjacent property and you'll lose your rent income. Many jurisdictions are and will be bigger and bigger pains about getting towers built and keeping them built or replacing them depending on where you are.
I think asking for some minor concessions wouldn't be ridiculous like asking for some basic landscaping around the tower site to improve its appearance. You may even be able to ask them to build a more opaque fence around the tower compound so you don't have to see it (a wood fence, a chain link fence with that plastic sheeting just so you can't see in, whatever). If they won't do it, consider planting some screening plants around the tower just so you can't see it as clearly from your house. The tower itself will be kind of an eyesore. Make sure it's not too close to your house. Keep it much farther away than the fall zone, I mean this thing is 260'x26' or so and it's going to be rather intimidating if it's easily visible from the house. Make sure to check and see whether they are planning on extending the tower beyond its 260 ft height one day and plan accordingly (e.g. plant some taller-growing trees between you and the tower  ).
If you're curious what the hell might be going there, it will probably look something like this:
http://www.rohnnet.com/files/SSV.jpg - These towers are about 300' tall I think.
http://www.hhvrtowers.com/images/Tower.jpg - This is a design used by Pirod. They're now owned by Valmont, but the legs on this one look a little different.
It probably won't look like this:
http://farm9.static.flickr.com/8001/7529101344_1ecdba9208.jpg - Unless your property is near the peak of a mountain or sizable hill I wouldn't expect it to look like this. A lot of towers my company has in California end up looking like this.
http://www.freefoto.com/images/04/23/04_23_93---Microwave-Communication-Tower_web.jpg - You may see some towers like these around. This is not what they're building on your property, I can almost guarantee it.
Ask away with any more specific questions you might have. I'm a structural engineer that works with these types of towers every day, quite possibly for the company that is looking to build on your land. To answer the most obvious structural-related questions you might have: The tower will be designed to a building standard that will keep the tower safe with something like a 700-1200 mean recurrence interval storm. If you're in central north carolina, it's probably designed to withstand 90 mph gusting wind speeds (this is a 50 year mean recurrence interval) with a factor of safety of 2-4. The only thing that would knock it down would be a tornado (and no there's no economical way to build them to withstand those forces). A hurricane is extremely unlikely to be a problem, even a very strong one as towers in hurricane regions are designed with enhanced factors of safety (the building codes take this into account by increasing the design wind speeds). As was previously mentioned, there's usually a fall zone associated with a tower like this that you'll be staying out of (you could probably farm the land adjacent to the tower but I wouldn't recommend building permanent structures next to it even if they let you). You should be aware that there's a very low risk of attracting vagrants with a tower on your property because they'll jump the fence and steal the grounding wires, so if possible I recommend you keep your property wooded or fenced all around, especially at the access road leading up to the tower (might be good to ask the cell company to put a locking gate at the entrance to the tower to discourage this sort of thing).
If you're curious just how big the things they're putting on that tower will be, the new 4G panels are usually about 8'x1'x0.5' (some are 2' wide, taller, shorter) and they will probably put 3-12 of these at each elevation where a tenant will be installed. They'll space them about ten feet apart, and they will mount these panels on frames that are about 12.5' wide and 3' deep. They'll put one frame per leg. There will probably be one carrier on the tower to start and maybe two more to follow within a few years. More carriers will follow in time if you're near a population center or interstate highway. There's a possibility that they will be expanding their leased ground space over time which could get you more money, but that's many years down the road (and I'd guess the tower they build will have plenty of extra capacity and room in the compound to match).
Bear in mind I'm providing this information unofficially to do whatever you want with it, but I'd imagine it's more information than what the cell company has provided you thus far. I'm not providing this as official advice from my company if you just so happen to be speaking with them (because I'm not going to sugar coat it where they might).   8/2/2012 1:14:50 AM
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