We have spent years working various angles on basic Internet connectivity issues for commercial real estate. We find it hard to believe that the majority of commercial real estate buildings do not offer basic Internet connectivity to their tenants as a standard service. It would be impossible, for example, to operate a successful commercial office building without plumbing for restrooms and drinking water sources, or without electricity for lighting, heating and cooling, and operation of tenant office equipment. In today’s world, having Internet connectivity in a commercial office complex is as important as being able to turn on the lights.

Commercial real estate owners and real estate management companies appear to be content to let ‘outside’ service providers like the major phone companies or cable operators to deliver Internet connectivity on a tenant-by-tenant basis. This is the result of two quickly discernable factors. Before the Internet, the PUC regulations for telephone services provisioning were the sole responsibility of the Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC) to the building ‘demarc’ and, internally to the building, the connection to the demarc was done as an ‘install’ contract by the ILEC or an independent telephone contractor. This was an area where, technically, real estate owners and management companies were hard pressed to develop an economical in-house engineering and generic equipment service for their tenants. Secondly, there was no economic way to become a telephone ‘exchange’ carrier to participate in the monthly revenue stream from the recurring service fees for the actual usage of a telephone system.

The arrival of the commercial public Internet has changed the overall picture. We have developed an approach that allows commercial building owners and management companies to participate at all levels of provisioning Internet connectivity services and sharing in ongoing operational revenues either in a partnership or sub-contract arrangement without a major expense. They can finally make some revenues from services already provided in their buildings where before those revenues were all collected by outside agents.

A shared, high-speed, dedicated wholesale data circuit, a few hundred dollars worth of networking support equipment, and a square yard or two of floorspace preferably near the building’s demarc for telecommunications are really all that is needed. Of course, building owners or managers might need a little consulting to understand how this could happen easily and they might also need a partner or sub-contracter to assist in the continuing operation of those Internet services. This is where BusWorks and “R and D Enterprises”, our overall Partnership, can help. We can show you how to pre-market your building, build a rate structure that beats the major phone companies and cable operators, and make the whole system profitable with only about 5-15% of your building tenants participating in the program.