Viewpoints
Upgrading internal wiring enables property-wide managed Wi-Fi and smart building IoT applications, boosting NOI and property values.
By Pierre Trudeau, President, Positron Access Solutions
MDUs are one of the biggest market opportunities available as a result of fiber deployment expansion. Operators have heavily invested in fiber networks, but bringing fiber to the building is the easy part of the solution. The challenge is delivering the bandwidth to every apartment inside the building. Across the U.S., 90% of MDUs were built before 2010 and extending fiber to individual units in the MDUs can be complex, costly, and time-consuming, requiring additional investment, labor, and building access. As a result, a significant percentage of MDUs are bypassed although fiber is available nearby. This is an excellent revenue opportunity when the right technology is used.
This lack of high-speed broadband service often results in higher resident churn, impacting Net Operating Income and property value for owners. By connecting MDUs to their fiber network, operators are able to extract the full value from their fiber investment. According to a recent study updated in July 2026 by Axis Intelligence, the U.S. has 84.6 million homes passed representing about 60% of all residential locations, but it only generates value when residents are activated as subscribers.
What if there was a better ONT solution optimized for MDU deployment?
For newer residential buildings fitted with fiber wiring or where it is easy to install new fiber links to each apartment, a deployment relies on a multitude of the same ONT devices used for single family home installations. This fits well with the existing OLT platforms and how they integrate with the BSS and OSS at the core of the operator network. It is costly and disruptive to rewire legacy MDUs. But what if there were an ONT solution optimized for MDU deployments, with native OMCI support, a multitude of Ethernet ports to serve subscribers over the existing coaxial or telephone wiring, and managed exactly like those SFU ONT devices? It would surely simplify how these MDUs are served and provide an alternative to having to bring the fiber feed all the way into each living unit.
Repurposing existing wiring inside MDU walls for Gigabit Ethernet
Copper switch off is accelerating across the U.S. with operators aggressively replacing legacy copper networks with fiber infrastructure. The industry tends to focus on what is being switched off: the transfer of data, voice, and video services to a 100% fiber access network. Yet, this does not mean that copper (telephone pair or coaxial cabling) in multi-dwelling units (MDUs) is removed.
Rather than becoming obsolete, the existing copper infrastructure inside the MDU walls is a valuable asset. With market-proven technologies such as ITU-T G.hn, that wiring can be transformed into an MDU-wide Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure, allowing operators to help building owners modernize and increase property value and deliver fiber-grade gigabit broadband to residents otherwise stuck with slower alternatives.
The perception that the telephone pairs or coaxial cabling are too old and unable to meet today’s gigabit broadband services demands is not supported by the latest advances in Ethernet over coaxial cabling or telephone pairs as evidenced by the substantial number of operators routinely leveraging these technologies. Telephone pairs or coax cabling installed in the 1970s are still good enough for Gigabit Ethernet and coaxial cables offers a robust infrastructure that will soon be able to commercially achieve ten (10) gigabit speeds.
Operators that have adopted G.hn routinely achieve Gigabit-plus (about 1.4 Gbps) bandwidth over telephone pairs and coaxial cabling. This is over 10 times the bandwidth of VDSL2 (and over 20 times in the upstream direction).
Back to the MDU ONT platform
What is needed is therefore a purpose-built multi-subscriber MDU ONT solution that leverages the existing wiring as the “Ethernet patch cord” to the Wi-Fi router. Furthermore, such MDU ONT must be able to operate at the OMCI layer to integrate seamlessly with the BSS and OSS and offer a simple to use solution, especially for operators that use OLT platforms from multiple vendors.
From broadband infrastructure to property value
The benefits of using legacy wiring extend beyond broadband connectivity. With the existing wiring refitted as a gigabit Ethernet infrastructure, MDUs can now enjoy property-wide managed Wi-Fi solutions and deploy smart building IoT devices such as sensors, valve controls, thermostats, and access control. This combination means that the broadband capabilities of an older building will match those available to new (greenfield) buildings.
This is a practical path for property owners to modernize older buildings and compete with new buildings. It results in higher tenant satisfaction, lower resident churn, higher revenues per apartment, and higher property values. MDU residents benefit from a fully connected broadband lifestyle and high-speed broadband services. Service providers benefit from increased revenues with faster ROI.
What now?
A straightforward MDU solution is to deploy fiber links to each apartment. Given the cost and complexity of this approach, re-using the existing legacy wiring enables these revenues to be unlocked.
Fiber operators have available solutions to expand the reach of their broadband offerings to every resident of each MDU in their market now. Adopting such a pragmatic broadband approach is not a compromise; it is a smart decision that increases the number of homes served and extracts the full value of the fiber outside plant resulting with satisfied subscribers that are far less likely to churn.
This is the evolution of MDU fiber deployment and therefore one of the most important strategic decisions operators can make today that will positively impact their business now and for years to come.
Some AI tools also assisted in the crafting of this report.
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