Feeling A Need For Speed World Wide Packets Showcases Its New Broadband Device

A Spokane company trying to be among the first to deliver broadband services to homes and businesses showcased its first product Monday. The device can move data thousands of times faster than a standard computer modem.

Privately held World Wide Packets introduced its subscriber distribution unit at the company’s Spokane Valley office. Company CEO Bernard Daines said the unit will “make information and services available to people they can’t get today.”

Daines started World Wide Packets last year. He said the company expects to hire its 100th employee within three weeks.

One of its chief products will be the distribution devices that enable homes and businesses to grab huge volumes of information and data via fiber-optic networks.

Over time, thousands of people will use such devices to work from home, download movies on demand and conduct videoconferences - all at the same time, Daines said.

The same devices also will be the network gateway bringing in cable, phone and digital entertainment to homes or businesses, said Daines.

Hundreds of companies are fighting to emerge as the primary designers and traffic managers in the evolving fiber-optic delivery system.

Another group of companies, including World Wide Packets, is contesting to be the leader in “the end game segment of that market.”

End game refers to the final leg of broadband delivery into homes or businesses.

Daines said his company’s first subscriber distribution units will be produced later this year. Visiontech of Spokane is making the devices.

Commercial versions of the same units will be produced next year, said Octavio Morales, director of marketing for World Wide Packets.

World Wide Packets likely will sell the devices to companies such as AT&T or Qwest, which will sell them to consumers for about $1,500 each, said Morales.

As such devices become widely available, individual users will have a choice of content providers. Users will pay monthly subscriber costs apart from the purchase of the World Wide Packet devices, Morales said.

The company is beta-testing its system in Ephrata, Wash. Stock broker Hank Worden wired his home with fiber cable and is the first person there using World Wide Packets’ subscriber device.

It’s designed to deliver data at the speed of more than 1,000 megabits per second. That’s about 4,000 times faster than a 56K home modem.

“He’s pretty happy with how fast his connection is,” Daines said of Worden’s reaction. “But he isn’t even using the product at its limit because his Internet provider can’t give him a fast-enough connection.

“Once that happens, he’ll be even happier,” Daines said.

The subscriber distribution unit is about 10 inches long, 6 inches wide and an inch and a half high. It includes eight ethernet ports connecting an assortment of home or business devices into the unit.

Those ports could be routed through a set-top cable TV box or to other home or commercial devices requiring broadband capacity.

Daines also announced two appointments to the company’s three-member board of directors.

Daniel T. Reiner will serve as chairman of the board. David Curry joins Daines as the third director.

Reiner has founded or been a significant investor in more than a dozen companies, both publicly traded and privately held. Curry is a highly regarded telecommunications industry executive and successful entrepreneur and is widely regarded as an expert in the telecom industry.

Daines said both men, who live in Spokane, will provide management experience to help the company grow.

“It’s important to have their thinking and their resources to keep me in line,” Daines joked as he introduced them.