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.
Onepath Networks, 600 College Road East, Suite3400, Princeton 08540. David Stehlin, CEO. 609-514-1800; fax,609-514-1881.Home page: www.onepathnet.com.Top Of PageFront Porch SplitsFront Porch Video, a digital video software companylaunched in 1996 by Jay Yogeshwar and Dean Harris, has reorganizedand split. With Harris as the new president, Front Porch Video movedfrom Franklin Corner Road to Penns Landing in Philadelphia. In MayYogeshwar created another company, Front Porch Digital, in CherryHill, and did a deal to make it a public company, and it is tradedon the over-the-counter market.Harris and Yogeshwar had worked together at the Toshiba AdvancedTelevisionTechnology Center in Princeton, developing the first DVD pre-masteringsystem. This system was installed at the Time-Warner California VideoCenter in Los Angeles and was used to create many of the initial DVDdiscs that came to market. Yogeshwar and Harris then leveraged theirexperience to found Front Porch Video to provide consulting and customsoftware development for digital video and DVD (U.S. 1, April 21,1999). Front Porch is an engineering term for the beginning of a videosignal — the entry point is called the “front porch.”Harris, the new president of Front Porch Video, went to Drexel, Classof 1978, and was a consultant at Bell Labs before joining the DVDproject at Toshiba. The company moved to Philadelphia to be closerto the workforce, says Miguel Clarke, the marketing director, butthe 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, developedin collaboration with the company’s Japanese-based partners,CinemaCraftand Daikin USA. Temporarily named Front Porch Workstation, the productallows 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 wantedto make a clean start, take new ideas, and back it up with capitalto develop new products,” he says. He says his new 12-person firmis creating products and services for broadband, but he also offersstandard DVD production services to improve cash flow.Front Porch Video, 326 Kater Street, Penns Landing,Philadelphia 19147. Dean Harris, president. 215-783-6702; fax,215-351-9220.Home page: www.frpv.com.Front Porch Digital (FPDI), 1810 Chapel AvenueWest, Suite 130, Cherry Hill, 08002, 856-663-3500 fax, 856-663-3503.Jay Yogeshwar, CEO. Home page: www.fpdigital.comTop Of PageExpansionsAmerican Computer Products, 1877 Brunswick Avenue,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 QuakerbridgeConvenienceCenter to Route 1 south, just south of Lawrenceville Shopping Center.He sells computers, parts, and service, both retail and wholesale,and is open daily.Stow Company Mini Storage, 2660 Route 130 North,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 10Pleasant Hill Road near Exit 8A in Monroe. It offers 200 alarmedunits,heated and/or fan cooled, plus an indoor loading and unloading area.A Touch of Ivy, 51 Everett Drive, Suite A-50, WestWindsor 08550. Ivy Weitzman, owner. 609-750-9004; fax, 609-750-9008.Ivy Weitzman moved her wholesale fabrics and home accessories companyfrom Witherspoon Street in Princeton to the office park just offClarksvilleRoad. About 15 full-timers work here.Top Of PageCrosstown MovesCenter for Health Care Strategies Inc., 353 NassauStreet, 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 willexpand to Lenox Drive. It administers health care programs fundedby foundations, principally Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.Trenton Business Assistance Corporation, 209 EastFront 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 from36 South Broad, the Trenton Business & Technology Center and has anew fax number. It offers financing and technical assistance tobusinessesin Mercer County.Christoffersen & Wenczel, 123 Franklin Corner Road,Suite 201, Lawrenceville 08648-1305. David G. Christoffersen, managingpartner. 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 andadministration, and real estate.The son of an RCA patent attorney and a school teacher turnedgenealogist,Christoffersen went to the Lawrenceville School and received his lawdegree from Willamette College in Salem, Oregon, in 1983. After threeyears of criminal law, he earned a masters in tax law, then practicedlaw with various firms. In 1992 he moved into Arthur Wenczel’s officein Lawrence Commons. Wenczel is now of counsel to the firm.Herman Panacek Landscape, 335 Hopewell-LambertvilleRoad, Box 65, Hopewell 08525. Ron Totten, president. 609-466-8408;fax, 609-466-8405.The residential and corporate landscape construction moved fromSeminaryAvenue in downtown Hopewell to Hopewell-Lambertville Road.Top Of PageName ChangesInnotrex (SysNet Consulting), 650 College Road,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 to8 p.m. at its College Road headquarters. Reservations are required.The firm is a full service IT solutions provider with offices inConnecticut,Chicago, New York, San Jose, and Yardley. In June the firm moved 18employees from Yardley to College Road (U.S. 1, May 10). It now has100 employees nationwide.”We don’t specialize in any one field but have a range of clientsfrom small to small and medium businesses, to Fortune 5s and500s,”says Romi Singh, president and CEO. Some of the clients are MerrillLynch, Goldman Sachs, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Nasdaq, Bristol-MyersSquibb, and GE.Accountants on Call, 125 Village Boulevard, Suite240, Princeton 08540. Dominique Debald, branch manager. 609-452-7117;fax, 609-987-0681. Home page: www.aocnet.com.Millennium Staffing, 125 Village Boulevard, Suite240, 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 aClintonTownship native who majored in finance at Clemson, Class of 1995.She decided she would rather work in a people-oriented position,startingfirst with Robert Half, then at Olsten Financial Staffing in RochellePark. With the merger, she was transferred to the Princeton office,a temporary and permanent agency specializing in contingency-basedsearches for accounting financial services.Debald is also manager of a second company at this address, MillenniumStaffing. Based in Saddle Brook, it offers executive administrativesupport personnel — assistants, word processors, presentationassistants, 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 hirepeople with a graphic arts background to sell and recruit for thatside of the business,” says Debald.The firm has a skills assessment and training system, ProFinder, toevaluate the skills of each candidate on various Windows softwarepackages. Online tutorials are available. Assignment professionalsget such benefits as holiday pay, vacation, referral bonuses, healthinsurance, prescription plans, and vision care.Top Of PageContracts AwardedInternational Hydronics Corp., 5 Crescent Drive,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, RayKerollis,and Al Mindler — has been awarded a joint patent with XeroxCorporationon a process for the removal, recovery, and reuse of selenium froma process waste stream. Xerox has been using this process since 1993and 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.QLM Marketing, 470 Wall Street, Princeton 08540.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 marketingagency, says David Reiff, executive vice president of QLM. Aclicks-and-mortarservice provider, the store is based in Atlanta.Top Of PageManagement MovesNew Jersey State Nurses Association/Institute forNursing, 1479 Pennington Road, Trenton 08618-2661. AndreaAughenbaugh,CEO. 609-883-5335; fax, 609-883-5343. Home page: www.njsna.org.Rosemary “Mimi” Cappelli, assistant professor of nursing atthe College of New Jersey, has been named president elect of theNJSNA.She will succeed Jo Anne Penn as president in 2002. Cappelli has abachelor’s from the College of New Jersey, Class of 1973, and amaster’sfrom NYU.Top Of PageDeathsMary Louise Burton, 58, on October 6. She had been housingcoordinator with Princeton Borough.Lee Stang-Harr, 72, on October 7. An artist whose workis included in galleries and collections across the country,Stang-Harrpainted a mural that hangs in the Cranbury Post Office.James Azah Carter, 71, on October 12. An all-aroundathlete,he played professional baseball with the Newark Eagles in the NegroBaseball League. He retired in 1994 from Princeton University. Aservicewill be held Saturday, October 21, at 12:30 p.m. at First BaptistChurch of Princeton.Caroline B. Champlin, 51, died October 15. She wrote fivenovels under the name Caroline Llewellyn and was a member of Sistersin Crime, a mystery writers group. A service will be Thursday, October19, at 10 a.m. at Trinity Church on Mercer Street.Stanley R. Perrine Sr., 73, died October 16. A formerWest Windsor mayor, he was a farmer who operated a landscaping andsnow removal business and founded the Hollyfield Nursery and GardenShop.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
