Owners Are Buying an Experience, Not Bandwidth
On October 29, Maravedis hosted "The MDU Opportunity for MSPs: Where the Growth Is and What It Takes to Win," a webinar with Gayla Harris, Corporate Vice President of the MSP segment at Calix, and Andy Dunn, Regional Vice President of Sales at SmartMDU. Between them, they see a large share of the MSP deals in motion in multifamily: the ones that close and the ones that stall.
The session's premise was simple. Multifamily is one of the largest underpenetrated segments available to managed service providers, and the opportunity is changing shape. Property owners are no longer buying bandwidth. They are buying a resident experience they can differentiate on, and increasingly a set of property services that run on top of the network. That widens the opening for MSPs, and it raises the bar for what a competitive offering looks like.
This post recaps the market data presented during the session and the ten most useful lessons from the panel discussion.
A Market Entering Its Decisive Window
Maravedis Research frames the scale. The U.S. counts about 25.1 million multifamily rental units in buildings of five or more units, spread across roughly 433,000 properties. About 12.1 million of those units, close to half of the MDU rental stock, sit in properties of 50 units or more, where bulk agreements, professional ownership, and centralized procurement are most common. For most MSPs, that is the core of the near-term opportunity.
Ownership is far less concentrated than industry conversation suggests. The top 50 owners control only about 11% of units, which means almost 90% of the market belongs to regional and smaller investors. That shapes how MSPs need to find and sell to decision makers.
Connectivity has also moved up the owner's agenda. It now ranks among the top three amenity drivers of renewal decisions, and it is one of the most expensive line items in the building. The conversation has shifted from utility to retention priority, and that changes who sits at the table when decisions get made.
The unit economics give useful context. MSPs average about $28 per unit per month in conventional rentals, while student housing runs closer to $7 to $10 per bed. On the cost side, per-unit capex runs about $1,400 in retrofit and $700 in new construction.
In our base case, bulk-managed Wi-Fi penetration of rental units roughly doubles, from 17-18% in 2026 to 38% in 2031. Growth is steepest between 2027 and 2029, then flattens as the easier properties convert, and what remains is older, smaller, or harder to retrofit. Four forces drive the curve:
- Bulk billing economics: owners lock in connectivity as an operating amenity and capture revenue that flows directly to net operating income.
- New construction defaults: more than 70% of 2026 developments specify bulk-managed Wi-Fi in their RFPs. In new builds, the question is no longer whether, but who.
- Wi-Fi 7 refresh cycles: an aging base of Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 networks forces decisions about future-ready infrastructure, and often about the provider itself. Every refresh is a reselection event: a risk for incumbents, an opening for challengers.
- PropTech integration: access control, IoT, and leasing platforms all depend on a stable, operator-grade network. Owners who want smart building features need the network first.
Contracts signed in the next three years typically run for years, so the positions set now will last.
From Connectivity to Smart Property as a Service
The central thesis of the session is that MSPs should move from selling connectivity to delivering smart property as a service. In our view, connectivity alone is a race to the bottom: more speed and lower rates, all the time.
The smart building stack starts with bulk fiber internet as the base infrastructure. On top of it sit smart unit connectivity (Wi-Fi 7 and potentially 5G), IoT building systems for access and energy management, PropTech platforms such as resident apps and payments, and value-added services like security as a service and cloud backup. As an MSP moves up the stack, revenue per unit grows, and so does its role in the building.
Four revenue streams can run on the same network: IoT as a service (sensor management, alerting, and automated reporting), AI-driven services with outcome-based fees tied to energy savings and predictive maintenance, Wi-Fi offload with per-gigabyte payments from mobile carriers where indoor cellular coverage is weak, and fixed-mobile convergence revenue shares with operators. The result shifts the owner's conversation from cost per door to value per door. It also raises the bar: delivering those layers requires a strong connectivity foundation, the right partners, and an operational maturity many MSPs are still building.
Ten Takeaways from the Panel
1. The MSPs closest to MDU are already in the building
Harris noted that North America has more than 40,000 MSPs, and they fall into three groups: those that have already built an MDU specialization, adjacent MSPs that already serve properties through IoT systems or support for owners and managers, and those still watching from the sidelines. The specialists and adjacent players are the ones engaging most actively. "You'd be surprised how many MSPs may be doing work with a hospitality, a hotel, or even a property owner," she said, without yet having moved into the network or managed Wi-Fi. The usual trigger is a real customer situation within an established relationship.
2. Lead with resident outcomes, not specs
Residents do not think in access points or bandwidth tiers. They want to be move-in ready, with Wi-Fi working the moment they walk in; guaranteed performance from dedicated per-unit access rather than shared bandwidth that slows at peak hours; seamless roaming across the pool, fitness center, and coworking space; and bulk rates below typical retail plans. Residents now "expect just the internet to be on and to be easy to use," Harris said. "That's table stakes." What differentiates is a secure, customizable account that residents control. Harris pointed to research showing that while virtually all residents say internet matters, only 29% view their current provider positively, and to Calix customer Bluestream, whose resident move-in ratings come close to 5 out of 5. Providers whose pitch starts with specifications make the owner do the translation.
3. The conversation has moved beyond bandwidth
"18 months ago, you could have had a fairly traditional conversation around speeds, feeds, coverage, and price," Dunn said. Today, owners ask whether connectivity is available at move-in, whether it works consistently in units and common areas, whether onboarding is simple, and who owns the problem when something goes wrong. "We've moved from selling internet in a building to helping owners think about connectivity as part of the operating model of the property," he said. "The technology matters, but increasingly, the conversation starts with the outcome, not the access point."
4. Map the entire buying group
The buying group has widened. Owners and asset managers focus on NOI, property value, and retention; property managers on operational friction and resident complaints; consultants on architecture, security, resiliency, and cost; developers on whether today's investment stays relevant for five to ten years. "The MDU business is not a technology use case," Dunn said. Finding one enthusiastic technical buyer is not the same as winning the deal, and every room calls for a different pitch. "The technology might be the same, but the business conversation absolutely is not."
5. Choose segments for operational fit, not door counts
MDU spans apartments, condos, 55-plus communities, hospitality, planned communities, and mixed-use. Harris advised starting from adjacent verticals: an MSP with a healthcare practice, for example, may find 55-plus communities a natural extension. "Your first opportunity is really about your operational fit, not just the number of doors that might look attractive," she said. Use cases also differ by segment: senior living calls for features such as touchless doors and access control that student housing may not need.
6. Brownfield is the bigger opportunity, and it is not automatically expensive
Greenfield gets attention because it is clean, but the installed base of existing properties is far larger. "Brownfield doesn't necessarily mean rip everything out and start over. That's a common misconception," Dunn said. The first question is what infrastructure is already in place and what can be reused: fiber, existing Ethernet, or coax through Positron-type solutions. Start with the desired resident experience and work backward. And when a property does not pencil out, Dunn stressed, "having that discipline to walk away when things don't work is very, very important."
7. Credibility gets you shortlisted; balance wins the award
"To get on the shortlist, you need credibility," Dunn said: the ability to operate a network, understand multifamily, and remain financially and operationally viable for the full contract term. Winning requires balancing experience, economics, and risk, including whether the provider can deploy and operate without creating headaches for property staff. Owners want a great experience, favorable contract terms, and low price all at once, "but in reality, there are trade-offs among them." Knowing which levers to pull is what separates the winners.
8. IT channel MSPs hold a structural edge
Many MSPs already run security, identity, and managed services. Harris argued this is a real differentiator: owners would rather work with one provider than separate vendors for internet, IoT, and resident applications, each with its own contract and billing. "Connectivity is the foundation," she said, but collapsing those services into one relationship streamlines operations for both the owner and the MSP. Dunn agreed: "The owner of the property really doesn't want to manage the ecosystem for you." Partners help, "but from an owner's perspective, somebody still has to own the outcome." A unified platform matters as well, since asking a property manager to juggle 15 different portals for access, cameras, and other systems is a recipe for friction.
9. Scalability, not connectivity, is the real barrier
Connectivity is available almost everywhere, Harris said. The barrier is repeatability across a portfolio. MSPs that solve each building with a custom deployment and hands-on support end up supporting every property individually. "When you have those disparate solutions, and it's not scalable, you tend to have to cover the gaps in increased OpEx," she said. Successful MSPs build multiple deployment templates matched to property type and complexity (fiber to the unit, fiber to the building with Ethernet or coax, garden-style versus high-rise mixed-use) and rely on self-activation, resident apps, and proactive monitoring to keep the support load manageable. Dunn added that winners white-glove the first project, taking the entire connectivity concern off the owner's plate, because a flawless first deployment opens the door to the next one.
10. Relationships open doors that cold calls do not
An audience member raised a common frustration: most properties sit behind LLCs or management companies. "That's the million-dollar question," Dunn said. "If there was one easy answer, first of all, I'd charge for it." His advice is to build relationships early, through industry events and local real estate networks such as Bisnow, because "the vast majority of this space is regional," and when a contract opens up, every provider calls at once. Harris recommended identifying the top developers in your own region rather than chasing national REITs, noting that Calix helps MSPs map the largest property owners by zip code. For a first property, both advised starting where expertise and relationships already exist and using it "to create your repeatable model." As Dunn put it: "It's not a hard business, but it's complicated," and new entrants should not "try and eat the elephant in one bite."
Watch the Full Session
The next three years will decide who owns multifamily connectivity, and the MSPs that win will combine resident-first selling with an operating model built to scale. The webinar recording is available on the Maravedis YouTube channel. For the data behind the discussion, see the Maravedis reports Multifamily Rental Connectivity Market Analysis in the United States (2026-2031) and PropTech Evolution in U.S. Multifamily.
Learn more about how Calix SmartMDU can help MSPs capture the MDU opportunity.