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Published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on March 8, 2000. All rights reserved.

Intellispace

The name alone lends itself to associations with the

"smart-building" movement. Intellispace, a Manhattan-based

company that opened an office at 5 Independence Way last month, is

one of the newest telecommunications companies to capture the attention

of property managers eager to upgrade their buildings for the companies

of the future.

Unlike other companies that are bundling telecommunications services,

though, Intellispace’s product is remarkably simple: high-speed, continuous

Internet access through fiber optics capable of handling 100 megabits

of information per second. A standard telephone line, by comparison,

carries only 56,000 bits.

Founded in 1995, Intellispace has installed its fiber optic lines

in the Rockefeller Center, the Jacob Javits Convention Center, and

190 other buildings. It recently pushed out into the suburbs of New

York and northern New Jersey, where it has a contract to wire 18 properties

for Hartz Mountain Industries.

Intellispace will eventually move to a bigger space nearby, but Princeton

will be the company’s permanent New Jersey home, says Joe Anzalone,

the director of business development. "The Internet is an integral

part of technology today, and since this is part of the technology

corridor, it fits what we’re doing," says Anzalone, a former web

designer.

Using the established fiber or existing copper wires owned by companies

like Bell Atlantic, Intellispace runs a circuit to the main telephone

closet of a given building, and then separates dedicated circuits

from the main router to each tenant that subscribes to the service.

Businesses are required to contract with a networking service themselves.

Each building is fashioned with a redundant circuit in case service

on one system is interrupted. "We may bring a circuit in from

Princeton, and we may bring a circuit in from Jersey City for example,"

says Anzalone.

The cost to the building manager is nothing. Subscribing businesses

pay around $2,000 for the initial wiring and connectivity for the

highest-speed connection, and a monthly fee that is rate-shaped to

each tenant. For a full 1 million bits of capacity, tenants pay roughly

$1,000, but theoretically a business could subscribe to as little

as a 64 bit connection. Anzalone declines to make any statement now

about rates.

Anzalone has been targeting multi-tenanted business properties. Larkin

Associates in Belle Mead, a real estate development company that owns

and manages 60 buildings in the area, recently signed on, and Anzalone

claims to be getting from a dozen to two dozen calls a day regarding

Internet connectivity.

Commercial real estate and telecommunications go well together. In

fact, over the past year, start-ups have joined the already established

Internet Service Providers and telecommunications companies in offering

an array of high-tech services. Nex-i.com, for example, the Research

Park start-up, markets itself as a provider of pre-packaged, plug-in

local area networks. It leases services, provides help desk capability,

and offers Internet access through a T1 line, which the company intends

to become a framework for voice over IP and software distribution.

At a speed of 1.54 megabits per second, though, the T-1 lines pale

in comparison to Intellispace’s fiber. For the future of telecommunications,

that’s a crucial distinction, says Anzalone. "Once voice over

IP and different data services are available, it’s going to be less

costly to connect through a system like ours than it would be by other

means," he says, paraphrasing Intellispace founder Marc Josephson,

quoted in the New York Times on February 27.

Nonetheless, Intellispace and Nex-i.com are vying for the same customers.

"One of the properties I’m trying to acquire these guys have an

agreement with right now," says Anzalone of Nex-i.com’s founders,

Ira Baseman and Michael Marculek. Nex-i.com is currently in over a

million-and-a-half square feet of space, Baseman told U.S. 1 on February

9. For a 10-person office, the company charges roughly $1,000 for

installation of a plug-in system, and $1,000 per month for maintaining

the local area network.

It may come down to which companies are thinking long-term, and which

want to keep their network in house. "Not everyone agrees with

doing Internet connectivity," says Anzalone, "but it’s the

future of communications."

— Melinda Sherwood