Nearly one in every three households in the United States, and about one in two in Europe, live in multi-dwelling units, or MDUs, such as apartments, condominiums and townhomes, be they low-rise, mid-rise or high-rise. The broadband needs for MDU residents are no different than those for single family households, but the nature of the housing itself can make broadband service delivery more challenging.
Without question, fiber stands out as the favored mode for delivering broadband services today. Fiber offers unmatched speed, symmetrical performance, scalability, reliability and eco-friendly efficiency, crucial amid rising electrical expenses and a focus on sustainability. As one would expect, nearly all service providers, including cable operators, are actively deploying new fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks and extending the reach of existing ones.
This aligns well with newer residential buildings, most of which are equipped with fiber to the unit during construction. Service providers deliver PON-based broadband services to residents in these buildings in essentially the same way they do to single-family homes.
However, the majority of MDUs were built prior to today’s hyper-connected society. They are likely to be wired with both twisted-pair copper and coaxial cable, but upgrading these facilities with fiber, especially mid- and high-rise buildings, can be complicated, time consuming and expensive.
First, there are challenges of gaining building management’s and residents’ consent. Second, the cost of retrofitting an MDU with fiber can be 50% greater than installing it during the initial build. Third, the building may not have conduits or other accessible pathways through which fiber can be routed, further increasing the time and costs, if this hurdle can even be overcome.
Given all of this, an operator passing MDUs with their fiber network has three possible strategies to consider.
- Offer services only to MDUs already outfitted with fiber or where fiber can be quickly, easily and cost-effectively installed: This approach abandons part of the market, sacrificing revenue and leaving the door open to competitors.
- Install fiber in all MDUs regardless of cost and complexity: This approach increases the time-to-market and the higher cost reduces the return on investment. Furthermore, there may be some buildings in which it is simply impossible to run fiber.
- Use fiber in MDUs wherever practical, and in all other cases, use a fiber extension technology to deliver gigabit and multi-gigabit services over a building’s existing wiring infrastructure: This approach ensures full market coverage, less opportunity for competitors, a quick time-to-market and maximum revenues.
A mixed approach — complementing FTTH with a fiber extension technology — is clearly the smartest choice. And for cable operators, one fiber extension technology is clearly the best: MoCA Access™.
MoCA Access, standardized by the Multimedia over Coax Alliance, delivers multi-gigabit broadband services from a Passive Optical Network (PON) to subscribers over coaxial cabling. An operator runs a fiber drop from their XGS-PON network to a Distribution Point Unit (DPU). The DPU can be installed outside (e.g., in a cabinet or on the side of the building) or inside (e.g., in the basement or a wiring closet), adjacent to a point of access to the building’s coax. The coax is attached to a port on the DPU from which services are delivered to a MoCA modem in each residence.
MoCA Access 2.5 delivers up to 2.5 Gbps downstream and 2.0 Gbps upstream with latency under 5 ms, meeting the requirements of demanding applications such as video conferencing and online multiplayer gaming. MoCA Access 3.0 will go up to 10 Gbps. MoCA works over both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint topologies, providing flexibility in deployment scenarios.
For cable operators, MoCA has some distinct advantages over other fiber extension technologies. MoCA uses flexible bands, meaning the spectrum in which it operates can be adjusted. This allows it to coexist (i.e., operate on the same coax infrastructure) with legacy services such as cable-, terrestrial- and satellite-TV, as well as DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1. This feature enables a cable operator to continue using their current TV services, to offer multiple service types in the same building, or to gradually migrate to FTTH.
Nokia recently announced the industry’s first integrated FTTH and MoCA Access solution as part of its Gigabit Connect portfolio. This means that operators can manage both their PON and MoCA Access as a single network under Nokia’s Altiplano Access Controller, making operations seamless and simple. Additionally, both the DPU and modems support zero touch provisioning, saving time and expense on installation.
As operators deploy and extend fiber networks passing older MDUs, fiber extension technologies are key to strategically serving these properties so as not to forego revenue and invite competition. Higher speed performance, coexistence with legacy services and widespread industry adoption are a few of the reasons that cable operators should especially consider MoCA Access-based solutions.