For many years a lot of my clients with fiber networks have avoided serving large apartment buildings. There were two primary causes for this. First, there has always been issues with getting access to buildings. Landlords control access to their buildings and some landlords have made it difficult for a competitor to enter their building. I could write several blogs about that issue, but today I want to look at the other historical challenge to serving apartments – the cost of rewiring many apartment buildings has been prohibitive.

There are a number of issues that can make it hard to rewire any apartment. Some older buildings had concrete floors and plaster walls and are hard to drill for wires. A landlord might have restrictions due to aesthetics and not want to see any visible wiring. A landlord might not allow for adequate access to equipment for installations or repairs, particularly after dark. A landlord might not have a safe space for an ISP’s core electronics or have adequate power available.

But assuming that a landlord is willing to allow a fiber overbuilder, and is reasonable about aesthetics and similar issues, many apartment owners now want fiber since their tenants are asking for faster broadband. There are new ways to serve apartments that were not available in the past that can now make it possible to serve apartments in a cost-effective manner.

G.Fast has come of age and the equipment is now affordable and readily available from several vendors. A number of telcos have been using the technology to improve broadband speeds in apartment buildings. The technology works by using frequencies higher than DSL and using existing telephone copper in the building. Copper wire is mostly owned by the landlord, and they can generally grant access to the telephone patch panel to multiple ISPs.

CenturyLink reports speeds over 400 Mbps using G.Fast, enabling a range of broadband products. The typical deployment brings fiber to the telecom communications space in the building, with jumpers made to the copper wire for customers wanting faster broadband. Telcos are reporting that G.Fast offers good broadband up to about 800 feet, which is more than adequate for most apartment building.

Calix now also offers a G.Fast that works over coaxial cable. This is generally harder to use because it’s harder to get access to coaxial home runs to each apartment. Typically an ISP would need to get access to all of the coaxial cable in a building to use this G.Fast variation. But it’s worth investigating since it increases speeds to around 500 Mbps and extends distances to 2,000 feet.

Millimeter Wave Microwave. A number of companies are using millimeter wave radios to deliver bandwidth to apartment buildings. This is not using the 5G standard, but current radios can deliver two gigabits for about one mile or one gigabit for up to two miles. The technology is mostly being deployed in larger cities to avoid the cost of laying urban fiber, but there is no reason it can’t be used in smaller markets where there is line-of-sight from an existing tower to an apartment building. The radios are relatively inexpensive with a pair of them costing less than $5,000.

It’s an interesting model in that the broadband must be extended to customers from the roof top rather than the basement. The typical deployment would run fiber from the rooftop radio, down through risers and extended out to apartment units.

The good news with stringing fiber in apartments is that wiring technology is much improved. There are now several different fiber wiring systems that are easy to install, and which are unobtrusive by hiding fiber along the corners of the ceiling.

Many ISPs are finding that the new wiring systems alone are making it viable to string fiber in buildings that were too expensive a five years ago.   If you’ve been avoiding apartment buildings because they’re too hard to serve you might want to take another look.