Brownfield Is the Market: Five Takeaways from Our Webinar on Boosting Connectivity in Older MDUs
By Adlane Fellah, Chief Analyst, Maravedis
On June 10, Maravedis hosted From Legacy to High-Performance: Boosting Connectivity in Brownfield MDUs, a practitioner panel sponsored by Calix, which brought together Pierre Trudeau, President of Positron Access Solutions; Christian Breidenbach-Kaack, President of Agnoss Telecom; and Andrew Dunn, Regional Vice President of SmartMDU Sales at Calix. The conversation drew one of our largest live audiences to date and generated a lively Q&A; this blog summarizes the five key takeaways from the event.
1. Brownfield is not a niche. It is the market.
The numbers leave little room for debate. In 2025, there were 471,700 completions of new units in buildings with 5 or more units (Census/HUD ), but roughly 20 million units, or 82% of U.S. market-rate apartment inventory, sit in buildings more than 10 years old, and even in a historically strong year, new construction added only about 2.4% to total stock.
As our Multifamily Rental Connectivity Market Analysis documents in detail, new builds will not meaningfully shift that mix within the next decade. For MSPs and broadband operators, the strategic conclusion is simple: a multifamily growth strategy that ignores brownfield is a strategy that ignores four out of five doors. As I reminded the audience in the opening: “For MSPs and property owners, success lies in reusing cabling and retrofitting brownfield MDUs to be future-ready, because brownfields are not the exception. They are the market.”
Source: Maravedis, Census, HUD
Andrew Dunn from Calix agreed that the segment is chronically underrated: “In the industry, brownfield tends to get looked at as a bit of a stepchild because it is not as attractive as a new building. But in terms of pure TAM, it is an opportunity for providers who get really good at this to standardize and to improve the experience for their customers.”
2. Brownfield is defined by what is in the walls, not the year on the certificate of occupancy.
All three panelists converged on the same point: building age is only a proxy. The real question is whether the property is conducive to new wiring, and if not, what can be reused. Pierre Trudeau noted that Positron has delivered excellent performance over telephone wiring installed in New York buildings in the 1970s. “Rather than the age, it is about the type of building, whether that building is conducive to putting in new wiring,” Trudeau explained. “And if it appears difficult to rewire, do not stop there. There are plenty of solutions.”
The Wiring Beneath the Experience
Source: Maravedis U.S. Multifamily Rental Connectivity Market Analysis, 2026-2031 & Positron Access Solutions
Christian Breidenbach-Kaack, drawing on years of European retrofit experience, was equally direct: every brownfield is different, and nothing replaces a precise on-site survey of risers, pathways, and in-unit access before a single decision is made. “I do not like to see it from an ideological point of view. Every building, every brownfield is different,” he told the audience. “You have to get on-site, pay attention to the building, and look at what makes sense. At the end of the day, it is the customer experience which counts, not the underlying layer.”
3. Wire reuse is often not only the cheaper option. It is often the only option.
A fully structured rewire runs roughly $700 to $1,100 per unit before accounting for crews, open walls, and the disruption to residents' lives. Reusing existing coax and copper with carrier-grade technologies such as G.hn cuts that cost nearly in half, with installs averaging about 45 minutes per unit.
As I put it on the webinar: “Whatever managed Wi-Fi experience you promise a resident, it ultimately requires a Gigabit Ethernet backbone (or equivalent) through the building. For many of these buildings, reusing wiring is not only the best option but also the only economically viable option. It is the difference between the project happening at all or never getting approved.” The economics of these choices, segment by segment, are modeled extensively in our Multifamily Rental Connectivity Market Analysis 2026-2031.
The cost, however, is only part of the equation. Retrofitting requires opening walls, keeping installation crews on-site for several days, and disrupting residents already occupying the building. In an occupied brownfield property, that disruption, rather than the price tag, is often what kills the deal.
4. Residents do not buy speed. They buy an experience that works.
Perhaps the most clarifying moment of the panel: actual peak usage per household sits well under 200 Mbps, whether in a single-family home or an apartment. “No one cares what speed they are getting, as long as when they pick up their phone, it works,” said Andrew Dunn from Calix. “When they turn on their video game system, it works without lagging. It is the experience that matters.” He was just as blunt about the temptation to wait for the next standard: “Those arguments are not future-proofing. That is future-pushing. There is always another thing coming, and no one knows where it will end. You are delivering for today, and you want to give your residents the best experience possible today, within your budget.” The job, in other words, is to deliver the best resident experience possible today, within budget, on a platform that can evolve. That experience-first lens is exactly how we evaluate providers and technology vendors in the Maravedis MDU Connectivity Awards, where resident outcomes, not spec sheets, drive the judging criteria.
5. No single company wins brownfield alone.
The panel itself modeled the answer. A purpose-built platform (Calix SmartMDU), carrier-grade wiring reuse that integrates into the PON like any other fiber device with the same provisioning, activation, and monitoring flows (Positron), and professional on-site services with rigorous surveys and resident communication (Agnoss).
“Calix does a lot of things well, including creating SmartMDU, the first purpose-built MDU platform for multifamily. Some things are not within our core competency, so we lean on subject matter experts when our customers have a need,” Dunn explained. “It is knowing what you do well and leaning on experts for that which you do not.” Trudeau described what that collaboration means for shared customers: “There is no finger-pointing. We jointly own the issue and its resolution. I think that speaks volumes.”
Ecosystem collaboration of this kind is one of the categories we are watching closely in this year's MDU Connectivity Awards.
The debate that is not settled: connectivity and asset value
The audience Q&A produced a genuine disagreement worth highlighting. One question cited operators claiming a 25% increase in asset valuation from fiber rewiring; another attendee countered that owner-supplied internet lifts NOI by a more modest 2 to 4%, and a third disputed any direct fiber-versus-coax valuation correlation. The honest answer is that the industry lacks rigorous data connecting in-building infrastructure, resident experience, and property financial performance. That is a research gap Maravedis intends to address, building on the foundation laid in our Multifamily Rental Connectivity Market Analysis.
What to do next
If you missed the live session, the replay is available on demand. If the discussion sparked a project, two resources will help you take it further. The Multifamily Rental Connectivity Market Analysis in the United States 2026-2031 provides the market sizing, technology adoption forecasts, and operator strategies behind everything discussed on the panel. And if your company is delivering outstanding brownfield results, resident experience innovation, or ecosystem partnerships, the Maravedis MDU Connectivity Awards are accepting entries through June 30, 2026. Submissions are free, the judging panel includes 11 industry leaders, and recognition in the inaugural year is a story your sales team will tell for a long time.
Learn more about the Calix Smart MDU solution.