This goes in every direction you can imagine. They may have planned nothing at all, and then only worry about Internet access at the last minute. They might have planned everything in minute detail. If they have a detailed plan, it might be brilliant or stupid or in between.
We have encouraged people to put in some kind of media enclosure in each unit, 1/2" conduit from the media enclosure to wall boxes in each room, have a conduit system connecting the media enclosures to a utility room on each floor, and conduit connecting the utility rooms to the basement. One or two developers listened. A provider can install service without tearing the place apart, and they can repopulate the media enclosures later. Maybe it needs coax connections right now, but maybe it needs something else later. Some jacks can be coax, and some can be fiber or Ethernet. They can plonk in WiFi AP's that mount on the faceplates. They're set up for whatever is available now and in the future. Regardless of what their plans are, they should let anybody and everybody place a cable into the basement while they already have a trench open. Whatever deal they have now might not be the deal they want forever, and getting everybody's cable into the property means they're not trapped by a prohibitive cost to install something else. All of that is what's good for the property. What's good for you is a deal where you run all the cables/conduit before they put up drywall, and you pay for those cables, and you have a contract saying they belong to you in perpetuity. The landlord signs it because you're offering to install all of this cabling for free. Maybe you can make an exclusive deal, or maybe you can't, but if someone else wants to come in, they have to tear up the place to put in their own cabling. The cable company always did that around here, and it was very effective. I don't advocate for that, but I can understand why other people want to be mean bastards about it. Mean bastards make more money now and don't care if anyone hates them later. -Adam ________________________________ From: AF <[email protected]> on behalf of Nate Burke <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2026 11:04 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: [AFMUG] MDU Construction There's a brand new MDU Apartment building that is getting built very close to one of Handholes. This is in an area fully served by 5G with both T-Mobile and Verizon, EZfiber FTTH, as well as Xfinity and Asound with Coax, and U-Verse. We're thinking about talking to the management about also being a provider, since this is a greenfield build, and getting to the building is an easy build. But I was curious how the Internal connections in Modern MDU's are setup. Do all Apartments have pre-installed coax/Cat5 running back to a Telco room. Do they make the different providers wire the building with their own connections during construction? Our last foray into MDU's was back in the early 2000's, when there was a Cat3 and a Coax to the Telco room, and then a splitter in the apartment to the different wall jacks.
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