Corrections or additions?
These articles by Barbara Fox were prepared for the October 18,
2000 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Broadband: Onepath Goes the Last Mile
Futurists like George Gilder make grand predictions
about how wonderful it will be when big pipes to the Internet are
available everywhere. Trouble is, these big pipes, commonly referred
to as "broadband," are generally only available to commercial
office buildings. Homeowners remain frustrated with their inability
to get the big pipe connections extended through the "last
mile"
to their houses. house. While waiting to tap into inexpensive
broadband
bandwidth, these homeowners are now turning to cable modems or DSL.
"The dismal service business is in clear contrast to the computer
business, where many competitors vie for the consumer dollars and
do so by deploying the latest technology as fast as they can,"
writes Les Vadasz, executive vice president of Intel and head of Intel
Capital. He reviewed Gilder’s most recent book, "Telecosm,"
in the Wall Street Journal on October 12. "The last mile —
the connection between the consumer and the rest of the network —
is the choke point where the deployment of new technology is happening
at a pitifully slow rate."
The Forrestal Center office of OnePath Networks is one service firm
that is working frantically on the "last mile" problem for
residential customers and has just received a $40 million vote of
confidence. This round of financing was led by Aurum-SBC Investments,
a first-time investor, along with Patricof & Co. Ventures and Geneva
Merchant Banking Partners.
OnePath had gotten more than $54 million of investment in previous
rounds. Follow-on investments for this round are from CIBC World
Markets,
Israel Seed, and Israel-based Apax Partners. This "mezzanine"
round is expected to tide the company over until it can do an IPO.
The company’s U.S. clients include DualStar, Hughes, Pan Am Sat,
Southwest
Bell and Vyvx. International customers include Alcatel Marconi, Astra,
British Telecom, Hyundai, Samsung and Singapore Telecom.
In July OnePath released iPath products, which deliver high speed
data plus CATV and DBS entertainment video to multiple dwelling units.
Delivery is by a single wire or fiber into a building without using
a cable or DSL modem. Various major service providers are issuing
these systems.
HomePath, another product, is a Passive Optical Network (PON) access
system for single family homes. When released in the second quarter
of next year, it will deliver high speed data, video, and voice over
a single fiber.
"Our iPath and HomePath product lines," says David S. Stehlin,
CEO and president, "are gaining wide acceptance, and this new
investment allows us to grow at an even faster rate." A graduate
of the Naval Academy, Class of 1979, Stehlin spent five years as an
officer in the Marine Corps, before working at a North Carolina fiber
optics company and serving as president of Keptel in Tinton, New
Jersey.
When Stehlin set up his office here last year, the firm was known
as Foxcom. It is a privately-held Israeli company, founded in 1993
by Howard Loboda, and has grown to 32 employees here (with the goal
of having 40 by December) and 100 workers in Israel (toward an
expected
figure of 120 by the end of the year). Foxcom changed its name to
reflect a move from a focus on video to full convergence.
3400, Princeton 08540. David Stehlin, CEO. 609-514-1800; fax,
609-514-1881.
Home page: www.onepathnet.com.
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Front Porch Splits
Front Porch Video, a digital video software company
launched in 1996 by Jay Yogeshwar and Dean Harris, has reorganized
and split. With Harris as the new president, Front Porch Video moved
from Franklin Corner Road to Penns Landing in Philadelphia. In May
Yogeshwar created another company, Front Porch Digital, in Cherry
Hill, and did a deal to make it a public company, and it is traded
on the over-the-counter market.
Harris and Yogeshwar had worked together at the Toshiba Advanced
Television
Technology Center in Princeton, developing the first DVD pre-mastering
system. This system was installed at the Time-Warner California Video
Center in Los Angeles and was used to create many of the initial DVD
discs that came to market. Yogeshwar and Harris then leveraged their
experience to found Front Porch Video to provide consulting and custom
software development for digital video and DVD (U.S. 1, April 21,
1999). Front Porch is an engineering term for the beginning of a video
signal — the entry point is called the "front porch."
Harris, the new president of Front Porch Video, went to Drexel, Class
of 1978, and was a consultant at Bell Labs before joining the DVD
project at Toshiba. The company moved to Philadelphia to be closer
to the workforce, says Miguel Clarke, the marketing director, but
the firm is still working with consultants at Sarnoff Corporation.
From four full-time people in 1999 it has grown to 12 employees.
Clarke points to the firm’s new video archiving application, developed
in collaboration with the company’s Japanese-based partners,
CinemaCraft
and Daikin USA. Temporarily named Front Porch Workstation, the product
allows the user to capture, index, and store video for archiving,
streaming, DVD creation, etc.
Yogeshwar says he decided the first company’s "work for hire"
model was difficult for a small company to sustain. "I wanted
to make a clean start, take new ideas, and back it up with capital
to develop new products," he says. He says his new 12-person firm
is creating products and services for broadband, but he also offers
standard DVD production services to improve cash flow.
Philadelphia 19147. Dean Harris, president. 215-783-6702; fax,
215-351-9220.
Home page: www.frpv.com.
West, Suite 130, Cherry Hill, 08002, 856-663-3500 fax, 856-663-3503.
Jay Yogeshwar, CEO. Home page: www.fpdigital.com
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Expansions
Lawrenceville 08648. Halim Jung, general store manager. 609-656-7993;
fax, 609-730-1057. Home page: www.acp2000.com.
In June Halim Jung moved his computer store from Quakerbridge
Convenience
Center to Route 1 south, just south of Lawrenceville Shopping Center.
He sells computers, parts, and service, both retail and wholesale,
and is open daily.
Cranbury 08512. H.W. Gleeksman, general partner. 609-655-5151;
fax, 609-655-5478.
The 15-year-old self storage company opened a second location at 10
Pleasant Hill Road near Exit 8A in Monroe. It offers 200 alarmed
units,
heated and/or fan cooled, plus an indoor loading and unloading area.
Windsor 08550. Ivy Weitzman, owner. 609-750-9004; fax, 609-750-9008.
Ivy Weitzman moved her wholesale fabrics and home accessories company
from Witherspoon Street in Princeton to the office park just off
Clarksville
Road. About 15 full-timers work here.
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Crosstown Moves
Street, Princeton 08540. Stephen A. Somers PhD, president.
609-279-0700;
fax, 609-279-0956. Home page: www.chcs.org.
In January, this nonprofit affiliated with Woodrow Wilson School will
expand to Lenox Drive. It administers health care programs funded
by foundations, principally Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Front Street, Trenton 08608-2102. Deborah Osgood, executive director.
609-396-8271; fax, 609-396-0559. community.nj.com/cc/tbac.
The community development small business loan fund has moved to from
36 South Broad, the Trenton Business & Technology Center and has a
new fax number. It offers financing and technical assistance to
businesses
in Mercer County.
Suite 201, Lawrenceville 08648-1305. David G. Christoffersen, managing
partner. 609-844-0800; fax, 609-844-9770.
David G. Christoffersen has moved his practice from Lawrence Commons.
His general practice includes personal injury, estate planning and
administration, and real estate.
The son of an RCA patent attorney and a school teacher turned
genealogist,
Christoffersen went to the Lawrenceville School and received his law
degree from Willamette College in Salem, Oregon, in 1983. After three
years of criminal law, he earned a masters in tax law, then practiced
law with various firms. In 1992 he moved into Arthur Wenczel’s office
in Lawrence Commons. Wenczel is now of counsel to the firm.
Road, Box 65, Hopewell 08525. Ron Totten, president. 609-466-8408;
fax, 609-466-8405.
The residential and corporate landscape construction moved from
Seminary
Avenue in downtown Hopewell to Hopewell-Lambertville Road.
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Name Changes
Suite 1700, Princeton 08540. Romi Singh, president and CEO.
609-520-0500;
fax, 609-520-0510. Home page: www.innotrex.com.
To celebrate how SysNet Consulting has changed its name to Innotrex,
signifying "innovative technology and resource exchange,"
the company is staging a party on Wednesday, October 25, from 5 to
8 p.m. at its College Road headquarters. Reservations are required.
The firm is a full service IT solutions provider with offices in
Connecticut,
Chicago, New York, San Jose, and Yardley. In June the firm moved 18
employees from Yardley to College Road (U.S. 1, May 10). It now has
100 employees nationwide.
"We don’t specialize in any one field but have a range of clients
from small to small and medium businesses, to Fortune 5s and
500s,"
says Romi Singh, president and CEO. Some of the clients are Merrill
Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Nasdaq, Bristol-Myers
Squibb, and GE.
240, Princeton 08540. Dominique Debald, branch manager. 609-452-7117;
fax, 609-987-0681. Home page: www.aocnet.com.
240, Princeton 08540. Dominique Debald, branch manager. 609-987-0088;
fax, 609-987-9449. Home page: www.millennium-staffing.com.
When Accountants on Call bought Olsten Financial Staffing last year,
the two firms merged. The branch manager, Dominique Debald, is a
Clinton
Township native who majored in finance at Clemson, Class of 1995.
She decided she would rather work in a people-oriented position,
starting
first with Robert Half, then at Olsten Financial Staffing in Rochelle
Park. With the merger, she was transferred to the Princeton office,
a temporary and permanent agency specializing in contingency-based
searches for accounting financial services.
Debald is also manager of a second company at this address, Millennium
Staffing. Based in Saddle Brook, it offers executive administrative
support personnel — assistants, word processors, presentation
assistants, desktop publishers, and customer service.
"We saw there was a huge market for skilled administration staff.
Our office does not do creative services yet, but soon we will hire
people with a graphic arts background to sell and recruit for that
side of the business," says Debald.
The firm has a skills assessment and training system, ProFinder, to
evaluate the skills of each candidate on various Windows software
packages. Online tutorials are available. Assignment professionals
get such benefits as holiday pay, vacation, referral bonuses, health
insurance, prescription plans, and vision care.
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Contracts Awarded
Princeton Business Park, Suite A-2, Box 243, Rocky Hill 08553-0243.
Robert B. Bruns, president. 609-921-9216; fax, 609-921-8282.
The International Hydronics process team — Bruce Bruns, Ray
Kerollis,
and Al Mindler — has been awarded a joint patent with Xerox
Corporation
on a process for the removal, recovery, and reuse of selenium from
a process waste stream. Xerox has been using this process since 1993
and has saved more than $100,000 per year in chemical and water usage,
haulage, and disposal costs.
The firm does environmental analyses, specialty laboratory services,
process evaluation and development.
W. Robert Lipsky, chairman, CEO. 609-683-1177; fax, 609-924-8007.
Home page: www.qlm.com.
The Home Service Store is a new client for this national marketing
agency, says David Reiff, executive vice president of QLM. A
clicks-and-mortar
service provider, the store is based in Atlanta.
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Management Moves
Nursing, 1479 Pennington Road, Trenton 08618-2661. Andrea
Aughenbaugh,
CEO. 609-883-5335; fax, 609-883-5343. Home page: www.njsna.org.
Rosemary "Mimi" Cappelli, assistant professor of nursing at
the College of New Jersey, has been named president elect of the
NJSNA.
She will succeed Jo Anne Penn as president in 2002. Cappelli has a
bachelor’s from the College of New Jersey, Class of 1973, and a
master’s
from NYU.
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Deaths
coordinator with Princeton Borough.
is included in galleries and collections across the country,
Stang-Harr
painted a mural that hangs in the Cranbury Post Office.
athlete,
he played professional baseball with the Newark Eagles in the Negro
Baseball League. He retired in 1994 from Princeton University. A
service
will be held Saturday, October 21, at 12:30 p.m. at First Baptist
Church of Princeton.
novels under the name Caroline Llewellyn and was a member of Sisters
in Crime, a mystery writers group. A service will be Thursday, October
19, at 10 a.m. at Trinity Church on Mercer Street.
West Windsor mayor, he was a farmer who operated a landscaping and
snow removal business and founded the Hollyfield Nursery and Garden
Shop.
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