[Davisgig] Meeting with Communications Resources

[Fei Li]

> There is a high turnover rate of residents with
> new students every year, making customer saturation highly variable.

Maybe something that we don't need to worry about. Housing vacancy is less than 1% in the city of Davis and it's probably not gonna get any better any time soon (even with the Cannery opening). 

Even if we could get a few properties on board with running new wires, it still might not cause an immediate adoption among all properties because of the high demand for housing (regardless of infrastructure).

HOWEVER, here are some things to think about if fiber does get adopted:
Property management groups will probably be slow to adopt fiber because some of them will have to rework their expensive infrastructure. Fiber capabilities will become a "feature" for them to provide in order to stay competitive. Apartment complexes and other properties will probably model fiber capability similar to how they provide cable or wifi:  Free fiber, fiber-ready, no fiber.

________________________________________
From: davisgig-bounces at list.omsoft.com <davisgig-bounces at list.omsoft.com> on behalf of Paul <pbiddle at omsoft.com>
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 1:23 PM
To: davisgig at list.omsoft.com
Subject: Re: [Davisgig] Meeting with Communications Resources

Apartment complexes and other MDU (multidwelling unit) are tricky. There
are many different common wiring configurations among MDU, some of which
are very problematic. There is a high turnover rate of residents with
new students every year, making customer saturation highly variable.
Management at properties can change fairly regularly as well making long
term contracts difficult.

The ideal wiring configuration is a single MPOE in central lockable
wiring closet where all units on the property have a direct wire run.
This usually provides a dry and secure location for the DSL equipment
with easy access to electrical power. This configuration requires only
one fiber run and also reduces the amount of required expensive DSL
equipment (potentially tens of thousands of dollars per apartment
complex). Unfortunately this is the least common wiring configuration
from what I have seen in Davis.

The most common configuration is multiple MPOE in small wiring cabinets
located on the side of each distinct building on the property. These
cabinets usually service anywhere from 8 to 16 units each. These
cabinets are too small to add any equipment to and have no electrical. A
new weatherproof and lockable cabinet would need to be installed nearby
with a fiber drop and electrical. This also increases the amount of DSL
equipment needed per property since you need at least one DSLAM per
building even if there is only one customer using it.

Even in the multiple MPOE configuration there are different kinds of
internal wiring. The ideal situation is a direct run from each unit
which usually provides 2 to 4 dedicated wire pairs per unit. The more
common situation is one or two 8-pair cables that run behind every
outlet through every apartment in the building. This wiring method is
problematic for multiple reasons. A wire pair may be severed or
disrupted behind any outlet in any apartment and will be difficult if
not impossible to resolve without having access to every apartment in
which the wire runs. It also increases the total length of the copper
run which will decrease the quality of the DSL signal. In this scenario
it is common for multiple pairs to be simply unusable, and some
apartments to be unserviceable without a new wire run. Some apartment
managers are simply unwilling to address phone wiring issues.

MDU may be a good market but they come with a whole new list of
considerations that may be more applicable to the service provider than
to the infrastructure provider.



On 4/15/2015 3:51 PM, Steve McMahon wrote:
> I seem to recall from the old Telecommunications Commission days that
> UCD has a survey (or list) of apartment buildings with very large
> numbers of students.
>
> It occurs to me that these apartment complexes might be great
> opportunities for early deployment. They're going to have a very high
> connection density, making for rapid payback.
>
> I believe that in South Korea, a common mechanism for apartment
> buildings is to take fiber to the apartment buildings then use a very
> high-speed, short-distance version of DSL to use twisted pair to
> apartment buildings. I wonder if that's feasible here. I'd love to
> find a way to make big apartment complexes early supporters of this
> project.

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