Daines Company Going High Speed Tech Group Developing Fast Links For Residential Communities

World Wide Packets, the second Spokane technology company launched by Bernard Daines, wants to wire the world’s neighborhoods.

Started last year, the company will introduce networking equipment to give homes and small businesses high-speed broadband data delivery.

In layman’s terms, it will build equipment that will offer extra-fast access to the wired world.

The first components using that advanced technology will be launched later this year, said Marketing Director Robin Toth.

Instead of targeting large companies, the company is aiming at residences and small businesses.

“There is not as much competition for the residential end-user,” said Toth.

World Wide Packets has more than 20 employees at its office near Pines and Nora in the Spokane Valley. The privately held company hopes to grow to 100 to 200 by next year.

The company will build a production facility somewhere in the Spokane Valley. Toth said several sites are under consideration.

Along with several other technology firms, World Wide Packets has formed the 10-Gigabit Ethernet Alliance, a partnership of businesses eager to push broadband development.

Ultimately, 10-Gigabit systems should transmit data at 10,000 megabits a second. Currently, cable modems handle data at about 2 to 5 megabits per second.

Driving the market are residents and small-business owners who’ve decided faster is better, said Toth.

“This will enable video on demand, voice telephone over the Internet, video conferencing, telecommuting. All those cool things people have been exposed to at their offices and want to have in their homes,” she said.

The system engineered by World Wide Packets involves a distribution device that manages data to as many as 100 subscriber devices.

The distribution device would be like a neighborhood transmitter, delivering and receiving data to devices installed in nearby homes. They’d be linked by fiber-optic cable.

Phone companies today use fiber-optic lines for moving data across large distances. But those fiber-optic networks now bog down as data is delivered directly into the home through twisted-copper phone lines.

In effect, World Wide Packet will bridge that “last mile” with a full fiber-optic system, said Toth.

Each home device has the potential to be a master box controlling wired appliances, Internet functions and message management tools.

Primary clients for the system will be residential developers who will choose to wire homes and subdivisions with fiber-optic cables and then install 10-Gigabit Ethernet devices.

Daines grew up in Spokane, then moved to California where he helped develop high-speed Ethernet devices.

After returning to Spokane in 1995, Daines started Packet Engines, which helped develop the Gigabit Ethernet technology, the predecessor to 10-Gigabit Ethernet.

French broadband company Alcatel purchased Packet Engines in 1998.

World Wide Packets has agreed to test its devices at a Liberty Lake custom-home development, Toth said.

Sullivan Homes Inc. plans to install fiber-optic cables into two proposed Liberty Lake subdivisions sometime in the next two years.

Companies like World Wide Packets are betting home users will pay extra for that faster broadband option.

Research has shown homes with that kind of high-speed technology will carry a premium sales price of “from 10 to 40 percent,” Toth said.

Other companies are developing technology that would retrofit existing homes to accept the 10-Gigabit Ethernet devices, she said.