Qwest Communications is hailing its first ever fiber-to-the-premises deployment in a mixed-use greenfield development south of Denver.

Residents of the Ridgegate community in Lone Tree, Colo., will receive local and long-distance voice, television--including more than 200 channels, high-definition programming and digital video recorders--wireless and high-speed Internet access ranging from 1.5 Mb/s (which Qwest said residents would receive "automatically, at a reduced rate") to 40 Mb/s.

According to Coventry Development, which broke ground on the Ridgegate development in October 2004, Ridgegate's first five residents moved in last month, and at least one has Qwest's service up and running. A Coventry spokesperson said she didn't immediately know if residents would have their choice of telecom providers.

Over the next few years, Coventry plans to grow the community to include 260 homes. Over the next 40 years, the plan is to build 10,000 to 12,000 homes on the 3500-acre property, which straddles the I-25 highway.

Qwest won't reveal the vendor it's using for the deployment but confirmed that it is using broadband passive optical networking technology.

Coventry hired The Broadband Group, a consultancy, to create and oversee the request for proposals (RFP) that was issued to several telecom service providers.

"Qwest knocked it out of the park," said a Coventry spokesperson, referring to the RFP. "They had the ability to act on it quickly and to service this many homes. There are many smaller providers that have done this, but they can't do it to the level that Qwest can."

Qwest plans to deploy FTTP elsewhere, but--like SBC--only in greenfield developments. Qwest will look for developments of a certain density and projected growth, the specifics of which the company won't reveal. "We don't think it makes sense to overlay our current copper facilities," a Qwest spokesperson said. "We believe there's still a lot of inherent value in our copper network."