What is a microwave tower?

Microwave towers are telecommunications towers that use microwaves to transmit telephone and television signals to other microwave towers. This technology replaced existing transmission wires, but it is almost entirely obsolete as of 2015 due to the advent of fiber optics and other modern methods of telecommunication.

Beginning in 1951, AT&T launched a network of microwave towers known as the microwave radio-relay skyway. This project took around three years to complete with an estimated cost of $40 million. AT&T sold most of the microwave towers within its skyway network in 1999. Some retrofitted microwave towers of today function as private communications platforms.