GILROY
– Less than 30 miles away from an area named for its
cutting-edge high-tech companies, Jim Goldman is one of many who
live in a virtual technology black hole.
GILROY – Less than 30 miles away from an area named for its cutting-edge high-tech companies, Jim Goldman is one of many who live in a virtual technology black hole.
For Goldman, being without such luxuries as a cell phone that works at home, cable television through anything other than satellite or high-speed Internet is almost embarrassing because he runs the Silicon Valley bureau of the Tech TV cable network.
“I tell people I have a dial-up connection, and they laugh at me,” he said.
But through the efforts of one retired Silicon Valley worker who also resides in the rural areas in the valley south of San Jose, anyone like Goldman starving for a high-speed Internet solution and has a clear view of Mount Madonna will only have to wait another month as a new broadband company plans to bring wireless high-speed Internet to Gilroy, San Martin, Morgan Hill, Watsonville and Santa Cruz.
Osvaldo Hilde, who once started a software company in Silicon Valley called Replico, is a Redwood Retreat Road resident in the sparsely populated mountains west of Gilroy, where he can’t use a cell phone and for years has been hobbling along with a slow telephone dial-up Internet connection that rarely pushes more than 26.4 kilobytes per second.
“How can that be that we live in Silicon Valley, but we can’t even get high-speed Internet?” Hilde asked. “We go 25 or 30 minutes, and we’re in the technological realm. We’re surrounded by it, but we can’t get it. Rural America has been ignored because other companies can come in and use their equipment and undercut their prices.”
So instead of continuing to wait for a company to offer a solution, Hilde and his wife, Carol, circulated a flyer asking other area residents about their interest in bringing in a high-speed Internet company and got a huge response. Knowing he had his neighborhood’s support, Hilde went searching for a solution and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Now, I get up at 7 or 8 o’clock and work until 10 o’clock,” Hilde said of his long days spent on the project. “I spend all my time on it. This is what I do. … But I will get high-speed Internet.”
Hilde has written more than 500 e-mails on the subject to various Internet providers – some of them answered, many didn’t – until he spoke with Alexander Hagan, the president of a relatively new Internet company called Etheric, which offers wireless broadband in the San Jose area.
“He put together a plan,” Hilde said. “He said we need to find enough customers.”
And that’s exactly what Hilde, along with other neighbors did, working to gain the 50 to 70 customers they needed to bring the company to the area.
“We’re doing it from the bottom up,” he said. “There’s a group of us that are desperate to get high-speed.”
Etheric
A “company of engineers,” Montara-based Etheric started four years ago on paper under Hagan, but did not launch service until February when it began putting transmitters in the San Jose area. It now has service ranging from south San Francisco to Los Gatos.
The company claims to have the lowest price for comparable Internet service, while offering connection speeds that are almost incomparable – speeds 10 to 50 times faster than DSL, cable or T-1 Internet connections – with 6 to 16 megabytes per second. The technology is based on the same idea as satellite technology, only the signal is sent to a local transmitter instead of a satellite in space, making the system wireless.
According to Hagan, this kind of service would open doors not only for those who can’t get Internet in Gilroy, but for any residents and businesses in town looking for a high-speed connection.
“This solution is the be all, end all,” he said. “You get all the service for less price.”
While the company boasts among its 100 customers one Fortune 100 company and one of the top three Silicon Valley executives, Hagan said the company has had to grow slowly due to limited funding.
“We have a limited amount of capital,” he said. “It’s difficult. What we try to do with people is collaborate with them. We do it like a joint venture.”
Hagan told Hilde that they needed to create a broad customer base before Etheric would take a chance on the venture. Hagan also explained that while the system is cheap for business users, it has a relatively high installation cost for residential users. The system costs include a $100 installation fee, $599 security deposit on equipment and then costs $69 to $119 each month for different levels of service. The system also is limited to people who have a direct line-of-sight of a transmitting dish, which would be placed on Mount Madonna.
“I thought that would just make (Hilde) go away,” said Hagan, who instead was focusing the company’s next expansion on the San Francisco area. “I think I earned my spurs when I worked all night Friday, and I tried to call Saturday morning and reschedule my meeting with Osvaldo. He held my feet to the floor. He committed in a way that was unusual.”
Investigating the service
Hagan made the trip to Gilroy from his home in Half Moon Bay and explained the system to Hilde, telling him about the limitation of the system because of line of site, but also about the high speeds and extremely low number of failures that are experienced in comparison to companies that base service through wires.
“Let’s say you’re going to a Web site and there’s congestion,” Hagan said about other Internet providers. “Your system will have to signal for information to be re-sent.”
Hagan said while other companies can allow as much as a 1 percent failure rate, Etheric’s tests show errors appear in only 1 in every 6,000 pieces of information.
Hilde also went to the San Jose area to meet with a current Etheric customer to test the system.
Gulu Laungani runs an international travel company in the San Jose area and had been looking everywhere for a low-cost Internet solution until joining Etheric five months ago.
“This company is truly changing the way companies do business,” Laungani said. “I was spending $980 per month for a T-1 line and could send 1.5 megabytes of information. I wanted 2 megabytes of speed, and I couldn’t get it. We are now at 8,000 to 16,000 kilobytes per second (8 to 16 megabytes per second). It’s totally awesome.”
Plus, his bill has dropped to $120 to $300 per month, depending on the bandwidth he uses.
“The beauty of this technology is it’s wireless,” said Laungani, who called to inquire about the service on a Friday and was using it the following Tuesday. “If you have line-of-sight, boom, you have service.”
Laungani’s travel business uses several employees working from home, and he said having the high-speed connection is important for them to be able to access the server.
“My whole business depends on it,” he said. “This is the lifeline, and it works like a charm.”
After experiencing the system himself, Hilde was impressed with Etheric and decided he wanted to go through with the project.
“What they offer is very good,” Hilde said. “Now we have a chance to get to the forefront of technology.”
Providing the service
While Hilde hasn’t quite gotten enough people to prove to Hagan that the venture is sure to turn a profit yet, Hagan felt there was enough interest to go ahead with the project anyway.
The company is negotiating to place a transmitter on the KSBW tower north of Mount Madonna and west of San Martin, and anyone who can see the tower within a 12 to 15 mile radius can get the service, meaning all of Gilroy, San Martin and Morgan Hill, when it starts up, which Hagan hopes will happen by Dec. 1. On the other side of the Santa Cruz mountains, Watsonville, Los Altos, Santa Cruz among others also would have the opportunity for service. The company hopes to find a way to make service available to those without a direct line of sight by the middle of 2004.
Etheric is offering special community pricing for people who sign up before Nov. 7, offering a guaranteed 4 megabyte upstream and downstream for $119 a month, 1 megabyte for $89 and a 512 kilobyte service for $69 a month.
And Hagan said that if the company thrives in the South Valley, more companies will be sure to follow his lead.
“We expect to be followed in short order by other Internet companies,” Hagan said. “That’s why we work late nights.”
