Northern California → Cat5e in Bay Area large new res buildings left unused?

I'm just trying to understand the phenomenon.

Here in the South Bay area, there are a very significant number of medium- and high-rise new apartment and condominium buildings, with 100+ units per building (i.e. per webpass.net's pricing, they'd offer free building hookup), already having centralised Cat5e or even Cat6, yet there are basically no telecoms who'd steps up and offer any kind of VDSL or Ethernet connectivity at all. Why?

Heck, it seems like the community I'm in right now, is just about the only one that even has AT&T U-verse, thanks the building being pre-glassed with fibreoptics! Residents in most of these other new (2005+) and even newer (2010+) buildings would have to suffice themselves with either Comcast or xDSL from the CO! Seriously? Even AT&T can't seem to collect their guts and put up a node within the 250 unit buildings, and offer outstanding VDSL2 experience. Why? Where if not within these high-rises (Skyline at Tamien Station, Axis San Jose, The 88 SJ etc) could the population density be utilised to the fullest extent for the best VDSL results?

Why is noone stepping up? Webpass.net in San Francisco and Paxio.net in Santa Clara are about the only providers I have found so far that even offer this kind of service in principle (both happen to offer residential unlimited symmetric 100/100 under 100$, which is essentially what we're after here). Both seem reasonably sound, stable and mature, yet there are still thousands of people in the Bay Area living in brand-new buildings with internet connections slower than you can have just about all across the world, including Eastern Europe and South Korea. What's going on? Why's noone stepping in? Why not even the most popular CLEC/DLEC in the area, Sonic.net?

In my search, I'm still yet to personally stumble across a building here in the South Bay that'd have Cat5e utilised! I mean, I do have the moral right, if not even an outright obligation, to be surprised here, right? (-:

Best regards,
Constantine.

I share your frustration.

Business logic seems to show that at this time the investment to profitability trade off is not as high as it needs to be or it would be there already.

I cant even get UVerse and am stuck at 6mbps down w/piddly 768up. Conferencing can be flaky at times.

I'm in neither the broadband nor the property development business, but I really fail to understand how come, AT&T explicitly, finds it profitable to provide U-verse in non-apartment buildings, whereas most/many brand new apartment and condominium buildings with 100+ units built within the last 5 years all lack any kind of U-verse service to start with, here in the South Bay.

Do the developers require ridiculous rent fees for onsite equipment? Or is AT&T simply too lazy / can't get their act together? What's AT&T's justification, really?

I think it is a business “intelligence” issues they are playing with.

Their product development managers are probably sitting there in a room with a beamer shining on the wall looking at profitability pie charts and deciding if they want to cannibalize U-verse over another product owned by another company. I also seem to think Paxio might be an acquisition candidate by ATT. Keeping Paxio suppressed so they can maybe buy them cheap...? I really don't know.

I am grasping at straws here, but suppose you have a central office serving a hundred users all on U-verse. The data pipe to the internet is close to capacity at this CO and to provide fiber to a handful of users requires a non-prime time concentrator for the new Paxio-like traffic.

I think it is games like these that they are playing and the result is these new buildings are playing second fiddle to a less sophisticated technology so as to not cannibalize an existing solid revenue stream. It makes sense why ATT would want to keep these other companies at arms length.

So this is just my guess… and I really don’t know squat other than these types of games were played when ADSL was first released more than 10-15 years ago.

Well. The thing is, most of these buildings are served by neither PAXIO nor AT&T U-verse, so your speculation indeed doesn't seem applicable.

I've decided to start a thread within AT&T U-verse forum regarding AT&T position. Let's keep this very thread in the SFBay forum free of any AT&T U-verse speculation.

»Greenfield AT&T U-verse is... Nothing at all?

I would think that each building owner has its own contract bid winner for a provider to come in and supply any kind of high speed services to their tenants. I can easily see a building owner being paid, taking a kickback from a provider to only bring in one type of service that will serve the majority of their tenants. The minority that wants and is willing to pay for the fastest stuff get financially outnumbered. Capitalism can be a double edged sword especially when owners don’t pay but stand to make money off the deal.

Moral rights mean nothing in the face of money making capitalists and that is all I believe this boils down to.

You seriously think that AT&T would be content with Comcast paying extra to the buildings owners to not let AT&T U-verse in? Comcast sucks, but I doubt it goes so far. And they can't possibly preclude AT&T from putting that ugly VRAD on the street, either, so I think the whole point of malicious buildings developers/owners is somewhat moot.

I would not use the word malicious ... as it is just a fallout of doing business.

No, it wouldn't be a simple fallout of doing business: Colluding is malicious by definition. I highly doubt that it's the case, however.

Maybe they just haven't rolled it out in that neighborhood yet. It does take time to deploy new equipment, etc.

I live in the middle of suburban Silicon Valley, not the boondocks, and for the longest time there was neither DSL nor cable Internet available in my area. I think it wasn't until ~2003 we had DSL here.

That is the whole point Wiley.

These kinds of things take time. I know for a fact that on the deployment side there are always things going on. One competitor that has a better access concentrator that would extend capabilities, reduce power and elongating service life has the decision makers introducing delays to an otherwise earlier deployment schedule. Then another company comes in with their offering and it is all smoke and mirrors in that decision making process. There are deals needing to be worked out all over from the deployment vendors to, in Constances case, building owners.

Without a doubt this whole deployment environment is all about business deals and nothing more from beginning to end. The building owner has the right to charge for space on his premises and get as much as they can from any provider. There is no law against it. It is just a matter of who is willing to pay more for the space. I understand people are frustrated that this is not here NOW, so the misuse of the word colluding and malicious can easily be overlooked.

As you say Wiley, it took quite a bit of time to just to get you DSL in 2003 in the middle of suburban SV so there is absolutely no reason to believe fiber wont follow along the same mold.

As I've posted in the Uverse forum, talk to the property management. Other areas (mostly college towns) have demanded "HSI be available to every student." The apartment complexes were forced to come up with space (and routers to control their side of the circuit), AT&T was forced to install and the college polices it. I'm not saying ATT isn't to blame, but you need to look at the entire picture.

Has either side initiated contact?
Has either side said NO?

When you put a VRAD outside the property there are many cases where the loop will exceed max distance. Furthermore, a VRAD will serve 192 non bonded customers. The 4x4' room WOULD need to be larger if growth to 384 was needed. (Cannot place punchdown blocks out of reach, or near the floor.)