By Elizabeth Cloutman
Gatespeed provides home and businesses support and e-business consulting solutions
It can be frustrating to live and work in Silicon Valley, yet still be waiting to have a DSL line installed in a residential or business location. Gatespeed Broadband Inc. offers an alternative - wireless broadband Internet service provided by signals from a small, roof-mounted antenna.
“We can have you connected before the other companies return your phone call,” is the 2-year-old company’s motto.
“There are parts of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills and much of Campbell and Cupertino where DSL is not available,” said Gatespeed CEO Dan Arra. “Our goal is to complete installation within two weeks. … We go to someone’s home and pop up an antenna on a rooftop and point it right at one of towers.”
The tower that serves the Los Altos area sits atop Black Mountain. Gatespeed, a San Jose-based company, has 10 such towers in the greater Bay Area. The wireless wide-area network is built with Federal Communications Commission-licensed point-to-point links that enable service through most of the Bay Area - from Livermore to Santa Cruz and up the Peninsula to Redwood Shores, Arra said.
The company offers bandwidth options from 256 kilobytes to 155 megabytes per second, and its customers can increase bandwidth as needed. As part of installation, Gatespeed can also provide networking equipment and configuration service.
Gatespeed’s antennas are small, ranging in size from the dimensions of a laptop computer to 2 feet by 1 1/2 feet, Arra said.
In addition, Gatespeed offers business system support services and consultants to provide solutions for e-business.
Its business systems support services can augment or replace a small or medium-size business’ management information systems team.
Under a service-level agreement, Gatespeed will provide application, network and e-business professionals.
Gatespeed can implement e-business systems, whether it’s the deployment of local or wide-area networks, a financial accounting system or building a Web site.
Arra, a Los Altos resident since 1993, said he believed there were two key differences that make Gatespeed’s services special.
“First we have symmetrical speeds. (That means) the DSL has the same speed, up or down. Typically, DSL is faster uploading (information).”
The second key difference, Arra noted, is that “our service doesn’t require any interaction with the phone company.”
Service line-based companies can take 40-60 days “if you’re lucky,” he said.
Gatespeed combines Arra’s nearly lifelong interest in radio, and his training and 15 years of experience in systems engineering, product-line management and business development.
After graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in electrical engineering, Arra worked on the F-14 military jet’s radar system. He has also worked at Novell and Attachmate Corporation and was senior vice president of consulting operations at Brightstar Information Technology Group prior to founding Gatespeed.
He continues to be a ham radio enthusiast, a hobby he began as a teen.
For information, logon to www.gatespeed.com, e-mail info@gatespeed.com or call (408) 280-1811.
