THE U-VERSE APPROACH

AT&T also is finding that landlords are more interested in having their buildings enabled to offer its U-verse video service as part of a quad-play bundle, said Bill Story, vice president of AT&T Connected Communities, “an organization that works with property owners, both MDU and single-family, to bring new technologies into their communities,” he said.

“As the landlords begin to see the type of services available with U-verse and want to serve the demographics of their communities — highly mobile, technology-centric individuals — they feel like this is a product perfectly designed for that demographic,” Story said. “We will work with property owners on wiring solutions, as well as coordinating the services, and also sign marketing agreements for bulk contracts for property owners to market the services.”

Those bulk contracts enable property owners to buy services for every unit and include them in the rent. “A landlord might buy data services or a basic video package and include them in the rent as an amenity,” Story said.

Like Verizon, AT&T does a lot of creative marketing to reach tenants, but it also focuses on marketing agreements it signs with leasing agents.

“When you are a new resident and are applying and getting ready to move in, the leasing agent will say, ‘We have a preferred agreement; here's some literature,’” Story said. “It's a unique touch point, and we want to leverage that touch point. The FCC banned exclusive access agreements, but we can sign an exclusive marketing agreement, so the leasing consultant would only promote our services to the new residents. They are working very well for us. We have a relationship with most of the largest MDU owners or management companies, and we feel it is critical.”

Unlike Verizon, AT&T is not doing fiber to the apartment, except in new MDU construction. Instead, AT&T has developed a flexible set of options that enable the company to deal with the wide variety of MDU circumstances, Story said.

“Some buildings are already fiber-fed,” he said. “Or we can put in a node in the basement and come in with fiber to the basement or the first floor and then put in a [broadband remote access system] to serve the units. Or we may have a site on a public easement and have a node a quarter-mile away that can serve several buildings. Or we may have a node a quarter-mile away and may serve several buildings. It varies from city to city, so we have developed a set of solutions that give us the most flexibility to serve the broadest footprint.”

Meanwhile, Qwest isn't offering an IPTV service and isn't making a major MDU push, but only because the company has always considered MDUs an important part of its market, said Mary Retka, director of network policy for Qwest.

“We've always been interested in MDUs,” she said. “I don't think that is anything that has changed.”

Qwest resells DirecTV as its video product and offers a service that puts one larger dish on a building to deliver video to apartments within that building, said Steve Sklar, director of video products for Qwest.

“We do a bundle with video and with DirecTV in the MDU market; we offer a single bill solution with bundled discounts,” Sklar said. “We do face challenges with satellite in many buildings that don't permit individual dishes. We have solutions that involve a single dish that serves the entire building or whatever portion of the building is taking the service. To do that we need a certain percentage of update, and the building has to be big enough to justify putting in a mini-headend.”

Qwest does deals to offer a bulk service through the property manager in which the service is then part of the rent, Sklar said.

Qwest also tested WiMAX in the MDU space in an apartment complex near its lab in the south Denver area, Retka said. “We were able to use a location near the lab because some of our personnel were in the apartments across the street,” she said. “We also tested it in a residential area north of Denver. We were looking at all the technology aspects of that to determine if that was another means to provide high-speed Internet capabilities to any type of area. We continue to watch the progress of that technology.”

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