Martin Geddes wonders whether landlords will bypass network operators to deliver content to their tenants.
Brough Turner points to some slimey ways in which housing developers can keep their tenants hostage to their own private data utilities. You kind of wonder whether apartment complex owners will soon be getting into the business of putting a few racks down in the basement and installing a rack of hard drives every week, bypassing the telco and cablecos entirely.
This is already happening. onShore for one sells multi-tenant data networks in Chicago which only await an enterprising landlord. On the other hand, there are developers who arrange to have a single vendor — usually the incumbent local exchange carrier or cable franchisee — supply CATV, telephony, and Internet access in their new neighborhoods. Meanwhile, it behooves home buyers to be aware of the techniques described in “Master Communications Easements in the Fiber Age.”
Sometimes I wonder about missed opportunities. One day while riding the train into New York, in 1997 or so, I was quizzed by a gentleman in the real estate business who was planning to deploy web servers in basements and wire each apartment with Ethernet.