Communications is very important in modern society. With exception to SRO?s, there will be a communications closet in the office space. This closet will have a rack for servers, and switches. There is no telephone lines in the apartments for reasons I will explain later. Instead, there is a coaxial cable in the great room, and bedroom. For studios, there will be one in the main room. There are also a lot of RJ45 jacks. This is to assure you have an ethernet connection no matter where you would want to put the device.
For internet and networking, all switches are 10GBPS which means the bottleneck is like your devices being that they are consumer grade 1GBPS connections, or slower with wifi?. Each apartment will have a dedicated 300MBPS FiOS? connection. This will be the same upstream as it is downstream. This assures you have a consistent internet connection. Keep in mind, that Xfinity’s Internet Essentials will be capped at 75MBPS which means you have about 4 times the speed included with the rent.
For telephone, there is no POTS? services anymore. Simply put, Verizon who owns the POTS network in Allegheny County is shutting down its network. There are no new nor moving customers. This means you can’t get POTS phone service even if you had it at your previous residence, and you are moving to an apartment with FSP Realty. Because of this, there is no telephone lines in the building. If you are connecting a POTS device, you must use an ATA?. You would plug the device into the ATA, and the ATA plugs into the RJ45 jack in the wall. To compensate, all tenants will have a home telephone line that they can use for whatever use they choose. The apartment will have a single wifi phone. This phone will plug into a building wide network for telephone communications. You can choose to use the phone or not. If you wish to use other hardware, you would be required to support your own phone service. Your telephone number will be a +1 412 telephone number, and you would have unlimited domestic calling. If you need to reach another apartment, you can dial their apartment number (pricede 3 digit apartments with a 0). You can choose to make any calls, and there will be short numbers that you can use (such as PIZZA 74992 for the choice Pizza Shoppe). Since you will have your own phone number, and account – you would be able to make and receive calls showing your home phone number. You can request that your number changes 1 time during your time with the building. This way if you are getting too many calls for the previous tenant, then you can make the change.
For television, you would receive a basic plan for Verizon FiOS. I would imagine that you would not need hardware, and just plug in your TV to the coaxial jack in the great room and all of the bedrooms. For those with an SRO, you would be provided with a 32″ TV that you would be able to use. This TV will already be setup with Verizon FiOS. For the smart TV platform, you would need to plug the TV’s RJ45 port in the TV to a LAN port on your router. There are no RJ45 jacks in the unit with exception to 1 WAN jack in at the same plate as the TV jack. You will not be able to select a different TV plan, nor can you change your provider. This means you are tied to the provider’s service options as provided to FSP Realty.