Local Startup Plans High-Bandwidth Networks for LL Neighborhoods

September 27, 2000

By Eric Jensen

Gigabit Ethernet will soon be available for some residents of Liberty Lake…believe it?

Jim Wilson believes it. He wants to move the same kind of bandwidth and network capabilities once enjoyed only by big business and big schools to new housing developments here in Liberty Lake and the Spokane area.

Jim is the president of Tylite, a Liberty Lake company bent on providing neighborhoods high-speed and high-bandwidth computer networks.

While Tylite has only been around since this April, the company's goal is ambitious.

"We want to provide gigabit Ethernet networks throughout the world and also the services that run on top of it," Jim says.

In other words, Tylite would like to make your phone, your TV, your Internet connection - any kind of data coming into or out of your house - all part of one big happy neighborhood network. Called a MAN or Metropolitan Access Network, networks like these haven't often found their way into people's homes. But Jim seems to know what he's doing. His company, working with several others, completed a MAN for Spokane School District 81 this August.

Every one of the 53 schools in the district is on the network. The schools now enjoy high-speed Internet access and phone service over the network. They can share data such as library information and have the ability to use all types of video anywhere on the system.

Now Jim's plan is to work with developers, cable companies, telecommunication companies and government entities to install fiber optic networks throughout new neighborhoods, wiring each home with the equipment needed to carry voice, data and even video over the network.

"Video will really be what drives the demand for this kind of network," Jim says, after showing me around their wired model home in Liberty Lake. The home had satellite TV, which was then 'packetized,' or turned into data, and run over the model home's network. Jim is working with WorldWide Packets to connect the gigabit Ethernet network together.

Once the fiber network and a Network Operating Center (NOC) are installed, homes in a wired neighborhood would have the ability, along with sharing data, to videoconference with each other. Jim opened up NetMeeting, free videoconferencing software available on the Internet, and had a coworker walk to different cameras stationed in the house. From our monitor I watched him meander around.

"Video over the network has so many capabilities: security surveillance, videoconferencing, video on demand, babysitting, help with homework, you name it," Jim says.

Which means if my neighborhood were on the network I could watch my kids destroy the swing set in my backyard while I'm eating rice cakes with the next-door neighbor. Or see live video of who is coming to the front door. Or watch Junior sleep while I'm downstairs convincing QuickBooks I'm not really overdrawn. With the whole neighborhood on one network, videoconferencing reaches the George Jetson level of ease.

"We want the network to be as transparent as possible. We don't want people to even have to think about it," Jim explains. He had me make a phone call from the model home to demonstrate how you can't tell the difference between a call on the network and one that wasn't. And no, I couldn't tell the difference. It sounded like a regular phone calls - no echoes like the ones that can plague you if you've ever made a call over the Internet.

"Even-music-on-hold works," a feat that, Jim says, wasn't easy. "We ended up not compressing the voice at all. We now have enough bandwidth to run the uncompressed voice right over the network."

"It's hard to help people understand how difficult it is to make it all work," Jim explains. "It all looks so easy."

Another possibility for residential gigabit Ethernet is video on demand. Tylite plans to partner with cable or satellite companies to bring video content into the network. Residents would be able see any number of videos without the need for a VCR. With a laptop, a resident could go to the park and watch videos (or work) on the network. Tylite hopes to offer wireless access at a range of three to five miles from a wired neighborhood, and Liberty Lake should see this service soon.

While Tylite is installing its first network at the Riverbluff Ranch development in north Spokane, the primary NOC will be in Liberty Lake. Jim and company are also working with developers in Liberty Lake to install the networks here as well.

Jim, on his fifth start up, moved to Liberty Lake from the San Francisco Bay area about three years ago to work at Packet Engines. I have a sneaking suspicion that Jim, who has nine children, might be planning to use the network to install video surveillance to keep an eye on all of his kids...

"My goal is for everyone to have access to high-speed, filtered Internet - and retiring early would be nice too," says Jim, a Boy Scout leader whose own home and vehicles are often covered with canoes.