Verizon Launches Aggressive Plan to Bring FiOS Services to Apartments, Condos and Other Multi-Dwelling-Unit Sites

NEW YORK - People who live in apartments, condos and co-ops are the next wave of customers who could enjoy the benefits of Verizon's fiber-optic, all-the-way-to-the-customer technology. Verizon will aggressively pursue agreements to bring FiOS Internet and FiOS TV services this year to these customers, nationwide.

Verizon Enhanced Communities is launching a major marketing campaign, sending business development executives and engineers to meet with multi-dwelling-unit (MDU) owners and condominium/co-op associations to negotiate marketing and access agreements and technology upgrades.

Verizon has various technologies available to provide services in multi-dwelling buildings and complexes, depending on what facilities are in place or can be installed. Verizon signed right-of-way agreements covering more than 57,000 units in just six months last year.

Verizon is concentrating sales efforts in those parts of 16 states where the company is building out its all-fiber network. Verizon is the only communications company deploying fiber-optic technology all the way to customers on a major scale.

"We have the technology, we have the sales and engineering team, and we have the solutions to bring our industry-leading FiOS Internet and FiOS TV services to a huge potential market that amounts to about a fifth of Verizon's customer base," said Eric Cevis, vice president of Verizon's Enhanced Communities group. "MDU owners and managers know that first-rate telecommunications services like our FiOS Internet and FiOS TV products differentiate their properties.

"We are intensifying our effort, begun last year, to get FiOS services into the MDUs, and we expect this year to dwarf last year's MDU sales penetration."

The Enhanced Communities group also has worked with developers to connect new homes to Verizon's fiber network. The group has agreements with builders and developers covering roughly 152,000 homes. The marketing activity in both segments has been conducted by Verizon Avenue, the business unit long associated with Verizon's multi-unit, multi-building marketing.

According to Cevis, the first step in signing up MDUs is securing a right-of-way inside buildings. Either new fiber or existing cabling and wiring can be used to deliver the services. Building owners and Verizon agree on the technology to be used.

With pathways engineered, building owners can have an exclusive marketing arrangement with Verizon, or can opt for other marketing arrangements.

"We have solutions for just about every situation," Cevis said. "And we're finding that owners and developers in the MDU community, like the single family developers, see the power of fiber-to-the-premises installations to differentiate their properties from non-fiber installations when marketing their properties.

"And that differentiation goes beyond initial sales or rentals," he said. "Because the capacity of fiber is virtually unlimited, we know it can be kept current with new technologies or bandwidth demands."

Verizon's aggressive marketing campaign began on a successful note with the announcement today of an agreement with a seniors citizens' complex in Huntington Beach, Calif.

The 1,238-unit complex, Huntington Landmark, has been retrofitted with Verizon fiber optic facilities and a limited marketing agreement signed with the owner to offer FiOS services to residents. [See separate release.]

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ), a Dow 30 company, is a leader in delivering broadband and other communication innovations to wireline and wireless customers. Verizon operates America's most reliable wireless network, serving 51.3 million customers nationwide; one of the most expansive wholly-owned global IP networks; and one of the nation's premier wireline networks, serving home, business and wholesale customers. Based in New York, Verizon has a diverse workforce of approximately 250,000 and generates annual consolidated operating revenues of approximately $90 billion. For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

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MDU Fiber and How it Works:
Beating a Path to the Living Unit

Verizon's Enhanced Communities group has various technologies for getting Verizon's FiOS services the last few hundred feet into multiple dwelling unit properties

The All-Fiber Solution:

For new construction, bringing Verizon's fiber-optic service right to each unit, as it is done in single-family home construction, is the best option. That assures that the building's network can accommodate future demands for even more bandwidth. Fiber optics has a virtually unlimited transmission capacity, and it can be increased by modifying the electronics on each end of the fiber. MDUs can be retrofitted with fiber as well, and Verizon offers owners a high-class crown molding option for hiding the system along hallway ceilings and minimizing the fishing of wires.

When fiber is deployed to individual MDU living spaces, Verizon generally installs, in an unobtrusive spot inside the unit, the same optical network terminals (ONTs) that are used in single-family homes. The ONT includes the fiber terminal, distribution junctions, power supply and router equipment. A new, smaller ONT is now ready for deployment. ONTs can be installed on a wall or recessed into it, usually in closet space inside the unit.

The Multi-customer Model Using Non-fiber Paths

When fiber has not been run all the way to the unit, a multi-customer ONT can be configured either to feed non-fiber wiring already in the building or to support non-fiber facilities the owner chooses to retrofit.

Existing wiring can be used in various configurations. If CAT-5 facilities are in place, Verizon has a multi-customer distribution technology that can use that wiring and other existing coaxial cable for FiOS delivery. Ethernet service carries voice and data, and coax carries video signals.

Even CAT-3, or twisted copper pair, facilities can be used in combination with existing coax cabling. An alternate multi-customer ONT splits the signal to offer voice and data over a very high bit-rate DSL loop and sends TV over coax to the living unit.

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