Telecommunications infrastructure in a new apartment building is almost always an afterthought. Something the builder coordinates with NBN Co at the last minute, after the concrete is poured and the conduit routes are fixed. The decisions that cannot be undone are made by default.
Six months after residents move in, the strata manager discovers the MDF room is in the wrong location, the lift emergency phone has no power circuit, and the CCTV is running on the building manager's home router. None of this is a surprise to anyone who has seen it happen before.
The point of this article is to make sure it does not happen again.
Whether you are a property developer, project manager, architect, or a strata manager who has inherited a building post-handover and is now dealing with the consequences of under-specified infrastructure — this guide covers what needs to be planned, what cannot be changed once construction is complete, and how to hand a new strata development over to an owners corporation in a state that is actually manageable.
NBN Obligations for New Developments
Developers building new multi-dwelling units (MDUs) in Australia carry obligations under telecommunications legislation regarding network readiness. These are not optional, and they are not the kind of thing that can be resolved after practical completion without significant cost and disruption.
The key obligations are:
- Lead-in conduit from the street to the MDF or communications room must be installed by the developer, to NBN Co's specifications, before NBN Co can connect the building to the network.
- Internal cabling from the MDF to each apartment — typically Cat6 or fibre-ready cabling — must be in place as part of the build, not retrofitted after handover.
- NBN Co's New Developments team must be engaged early. NBN Co has a formal design and approval process that takes time. Engaging them after practical completion is a routine cause of residents moving into a building with no internet service available. Months, not weeks, can be lost.
- The MDF room location and size must meet NBN Co's specifications. This is a planning-stage decision made on the architectural drawings, not a fit-out decision made during defect rectification.
A developer who engages NBN Co during the design phase, rather than during construction, avoids the scenario where conduit routes need to be changed, MDF room dimensions need to be renegotiated, or residents are waiting weeks for a service that should have been ready on day one.
For more on the infrastructure decisions that affect how a completed building operates, see Technology Infrastructure in Apartment Developments.
What Cannot Be Changed After Construction
Some decisions in a strata development are permanent. Once the concrete is poured, the walls are lined, and the building is handed over, changing the underlying communications infrastructure is expensive, disruptive, and sometimes simply not possible without major works. These are the decisions that must be right on the drawings, not corrected during defect rectification.
Conduit Routes and Riser Space
Where cabling runs through a building — horizontally from risers to apartment entry points, vertically through service risers floor to floor — determines what can be installed now and what can be added in the future. Insufficient riser space is a chronic problem in densely designed apartment buildings where every square centimetre is measured against NLA.
Risers that are sized for NBN Co's minimum requirements and nothing else leave no room for the additional cabling that building systems require: CCTV, access control, intercom, building management systems. Retrofitting that cabling through a completed building means cutting into finished walls and ceilings, which is expensive and causes damage that needs to be made good.
The rule is straightforward: size the risers generously during the design phase, because you cannot make them larger afterwards.
MDF Room Location and Power
The MDF room — the main distribution frame room, the building's central communications hub — needs to be sized for all building systems, not for NBN Co's equipment alone.
A room sized to NBN Co's minimum specification may accommodate the NBN network termination device and patch panels. It will not comfortably accommodate the NVR for a CCTV system, the access control server, the PoE switches for common area devices, the UPS for power protection, or the business internet router for the common area connection. When those systems are squeezed into a room that was not designed to hold them, the result is poor cable management, inadequate ventilation, and a maintenance environment that creates problems for anyone who needs to work in it.
MDF room location matters as well. The room should be accessible for service technicians without requiring access through private areas of the building, should have adequate power circuits (including a dedicated circuit for the UPS), and should have appropriate ventilation or air conditioning to manage heat load from the equipment it will contain.
Lift Shaft Communications Infrastructure
Lift emergency phones are a compliance requirement under Australian standards, and they are one of the most commonly under-specified systems in new strata developments.
The lift emergency phone requires three things: a dedicated power circuit (not drawn from the lift power supply), a communication path (increasingly delivered over 4G rather than a fixed phone line), and a test logging arrangement that records the outcome of regular test calls to the monitoring service. All three need to be planned and cabled during construction.
Running the cabling for lift emergency phones during the build is trivial. Retrofitting it through a completed lift shaft and into finished common areas is expensive and disruptive. The same applies to any future upgrades — if the conduit and cabling pathway is not there from the beginning, every subsequent change to the lift communications system involves significant work.
For a detailed treatment of the compliance requirements, see Lift Emergency Phone Requirements in Australia.
Common Area Ethernet Cabling
CCTV cameras, access control readers, intercom panels, and building management systems all require ethernet cabling. In a modern strata building, virtually every system that operates in the common areas is IP-connected, powered over ethernet where possible, and managed remotely.
Running ethernet cable through finished ceilings and walls in a completed strata building is expensive. It requires access, it causes damage, and it produces a result that is rarely as clean as cabling installed during the build. The cost of running this cabling correctly during construction — when the walls are open and the cable routes are accessible — is a fraction of the cost of doing it retrospectively.
The practical recommendation is to cable every CCTV camera location, every access control reader, every intercom panel, and every network switch location during the build, even if the devices themselves are not installed until later. Dark cable in a completed wall costs nothing. Reinstating a finished wall to run cable later costs significantly more.
For guidance on designing a secure and functional network for apartment building common areas, see Secure Network Design for Apartment Buildings.
The Common Area Internet Connection
The building's common area internet connection is separate from, and independent of, the residential NBN connections provided to individual apartments. This distinction matters, and it is frequently missed in the planning of new strata developments.
Building systems — CCTV, access control, intercoms, lift phones, EV charger management, building management systems — should not share the residential NBN infrastructure. The reasons are practical:
- Residential NBN connections are owned by individual tenants or owners. When a tenancy ends or a service is cancelled, any building systems depending on that connection lose access.
- Residential NBN connections do not provide static IP addresses, which are required for remote management of CCTV systems and access control platforms.
- Residential NBN connections do not provide dedicated bandwidth — a building's security systems should not be competing with a resident's video streaming for throughput.
A separate business internet connection for the common areas provides dedicated bandwidth, a static IP address for remote system access, and complete independence from any individual resident's service. This connection should be planned and provisioned during the construction phase, with appropriate conduit routed and MDF space allocated for the router and associated equipment.
Pickle provides business internet connections for common areas in strata buildings, including managed services that cover ongoing monitoring and support. Planning this at the development stage, with conduit and MDF space allocated from the beginning, eliminates the retrofit costs that arise when a building is handed over without it.
See Pickle Business Internet for the available options.
Smart Building Systems That Require Network Planning
Modern strata developments are increasingly expected to deliver smart building functionality — EV charging, keyless access, IP intercoms, remote CCTV monitoring, and integrated building management. None of these systems work reliably without deliberate network planning at the design stage.
CCTV
Camera locations should be determined during the architectural design phase, not during construction. Each camera location requires ethernet cabling to a PoE switch, and PoE switch locations need to be planned based on the cable runs involved. The NVR — the network video recorder that stores footage — needs a home in the MDF room, with adequate power, ventilation, and remote access through the common area internet connection. Remote access to the CCTV system requires a static IP address, which is another reason the common area internet connection needs to be a business service, not a residential one.
Access Control
Door controllers, card readers, and electric strike hardware all require cabling — typically ethernet for PoE-powered readers, plus dedicated cabling for the door hardware itself. The controller locations and VLAN design for the access control system should be part of the building's network design, separating access control traffic from general building data traffic and from any guest or resident Wi-Fi networks.
IP Video Intercom
IP video intercom systems — where residents receive calls from the building entrance on their phone rather than on a dedicated handset — are now a standard expectation in new strata developments. Door panels require PoE ethernet connections, and the system architecture needs to be planned before the panels are installed.
For a detailed guide to specifying and installing IP video intercom systems in strata buildings, see IP Video Intercom Systems for Strata Buildings.
EV Charging
Smart EV chargers require network connectivity for load management — distributing the available electrical capacity across multiple chargers — and for resident billing. Conduit for both the power cabling and the data cabling to each charging bay should be planned and installed at the same time. Running power conduit and leaving out data conduit is a common and avoidable omission that creates problems when residents start requesting smart charging.
Building Management Systems
HVAC, lighting control, lift monitoring, and energy management systems are IP-connected in modern buildings. They need to communicate with a central building management system, and they need to do so on a managed network that separates that traffic from other building and residential systems. Planning the network architecture for building management at the design stage — including VLANs, switch locations, and the management platform — avoids the common outcome of building systems operating in isolation from each other because there was no plan to connect them.
Pre-Handover Documentation
The documentation handed to the owners corporation at settlement determines how manageable the building is from day one. Without it, the incoming strata manager is starting from zero — and the audit required to document what was actually installed costs money and time that should not need to be spent.
The developer should hand over, at minimum:
- As-built drawings of all cabling and conduit routes, including MDF room layouts, riser routes, and the location of every outlet, camera, reader, and panel
- MDF room equipment list with make, model, serial number, and login credentials for every device — credentials to be delivered in a sealed envelope and stored securely
- NBN Co service agreements and any managed service contracts associated with the residential network
- Common area internet service agreement and any managed services contracts for building systems
- Lift emergency phone service agreement and the initial test log demonstrating that the system has been tested and is operational
- CCTV and access control system credentials and full administrator documentation, including software versions and any licensing arrangements
- Warranty documentation for all installed systems, including installation warranties and manufacturer warranties
A strata manager who receives a complete handover pack can manage the building from day one. A strata manager who receives no documentation spends the first months of their appointment reconstructing what should have been handed to them. That cost is real, and it falls on the owners corporation.
Planning Your Development with Pickle
Pickle works with property developers at the planning stage to specify the communications infrastructure for common areas, advise on MDF room sizing and layout, and pre-arrange the business internet connection and managed services that will be in place from the first day of occupancy.
Starting a managed services relationship at handover — with a building that has been properly specified from the design phase — is significantly smoother than retrofitting one after problems have emerged. The building's CCTV, access control, intercom, and internet systems are already documented, already connected, and already supported.
Developers who engage Pickle during the planning phase avoid the common scenario of a handover where the building's communications infrastructure is incomplete, undocumented, and already causing complaints from the first residents to move in.
To discuss your development, visit Pickle Strata Management Communications or get in touch directly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: When should the developer engage NBN Co for a new development?
A: As early as possible — ideally during the design phase, before architectural drawings are finalised. NBN Co's New Developments team has a formal design and approval process that takes time, and the outcomes of that process affect the MDF room design and internal cabling specifications. Engaging NBN Co after practical completion, or even late in the construction phase, routinely results in residents moving in without internet services available. Early engagement is the single most effective way to avoid that outcome.
Q: What is the MDF room and how big should it be?
A: The MDF room — main distribution frame room — is the central communications hub of the building. It houses the NBN network termination equipment, patch panels, PoE switches, the NVR for the CCTV system, the access control server, the building's internet router, and the UPS that provides backup power to these systems. NBN Co specifies minimum dimensions for the equipment it installs, but those minimum dimensions do not account for anything else the room needs to contain. A practical MDF room for a medium-sized strata development should be sized generously — typically larger than NBN Co's minimum — with dedicated power circuits, adequate ventilation or air conditioning, and cable management infrastructure that allows for future additions.
Q: Does each apartment get its own internet connection or does the building share one?
A: Each apartment receives its own NBN connection through the residential infrastructure the developer installs. The building's common areas — CCTV, access control, intercoms, lift phones, building management systems — are connected through a separate business internet service that is entirely independent of the residential NBN. These are two distinct services, with distinct purposes. The residential connections belong to each owner or tenant. The common area service belongs to the owners corporation and should be treated as a building system, not a resident service.
Q: What happens if telecommunications planning is not done before construction?
A: The consequences range from inconvenient to expensive. Residents may move in with no internet service available while NBN Co completes a process that should have been resolved during construction. Building systems that were not cabled during the build have to be retrofitted through finished walls and ceilings. MDF rooms that are too small cannot accommodate all of the equipment that needs to be in them. Lift emergency phones that were not properly cabled may be non-compliant with Australian standards and require remediation works. In aggregate, the cost of retrofitting what should have been built-in from the beginning typically far exceeds the cost of planning it correctly in the first place.
Q: Can Pickle provide internet for the building from day one of occupancy?
A: Yes. Pickle works with developers during the planning phase to ensure that the common area business internet connection is provisioned and active before the first residents move in. This includes advising on conduit routes and MDF space during construction, coordinating the service provisioning timeline with the construction programme, and having the managed services agreement in place before handover. Buildings that engage Pickle during the planning phase hand over to the owners corporation with a working, documented, and supported communications infrastructure already in place.
To discuss telecommunications planning for your development, call 1300 688 588 or email [email protected].