FROM THE INDUSTRY
combination means that the broadband capabilities of an older building will match those available to new (greenfield) buildings. For property owners, that means a practical path to modernising older buildings and competing with newer developments. It also contributes to higher tenant satisfaction, lower resident churn, higher revenues per apartment, and stronger property values. MDU residents benefit from a fully connected broadband lifestyle and high- speed broadband services. What now? We all agree that the perfect MDU solution is to deploy fibre links to each apartment. Given the cost and complexity of this approach, this eventuality is quite a while away for most MDUs. This means that MDU owners and their residents will still be left without true broadband services. Fibre operators have available solutions to expand the reach of their broadband offerings to each resident of each MDUs in their market now. Adopting such a pragmatic broadband approach is not a compromise; it is a smart decision that increases the number of served homes, extracts the full value of the fibre outside plant resulting with satisfied subscribers that are far less likely to churn. This is the evolution of MDU fibre 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.
transfer of data, voice, and video services to a 100% fibre 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 actually a very 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 modernise and increase property value and deliver fibre-grade gigabit broadband to residents otherwise stuck with much slower alternatives. There remains a perception that the telephone pairs or coaxial cabling are too old and unable to meet today’s gigabit broadband services demands. But this perception misses an important distinction. The copper access network and the copper wiring inside the building are not the same. Telephone pairs 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 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 (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 shall 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, ultimately, deploy smart building IoT devices such as sensors, valve controls, thermostats and access control. This
Operators have heavily invested in fibre networks, but bringing fibre to the building is only part of the equation. The real challenge is connecting every apartment inside the building. Across Europe, 35% of buildings are over 50 years old and extending fibre to individual units in the MDUs can be complex, costly, and time- consuming, requiring additional investment, labour, and building access. As a result, while a large percentage of MDUs may have fibre available nearby, their residents can’t have access to fibre services while their neighbours in more recent properties or living in single family homes fully enjoy gigabit broadband access. This gap in service availability is a growing concern with residents in MDUs and their owners feeling left behind. It is also a concern for operators that are unable to extract the full value from their fibre investment. Europe has impressive fibre coverage, with 295 million homes passed, but it only generates value when residents are activated as subscribers. What if there was a better ONT solution optimised for MDU deployment? For residential buildings where it is easy to install new fibre 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. But what if there were ONT solutions optimised for MDU deployments, with native OMCI support. a multitude of Ethernet ports to serve subscribers and, managed exactly like those SFU ONT devices? It would surely simplify how these MDUs can be served and may offer alternatives to having to bring the fibre feed all the way into each living unit. After all, this only means that the Ethernet patch cord from the ONT to the Wi-Fi router is the telephone pair or the coaxial cable already in place that terminates in the apartment and is then converted to an RJ45 Ethernet port. Repurposing existing wiring inside MDU walls for Gigabit Ethernet Copper switch-off is accelerating across Europe with operators aggressively replacing legacy copper networks with fibre infrastructure. The industry tends to focus on what is being switched off: the
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Volume 48 No.23 SEPTEMBER 2026
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