News and Information
Litecast Pitching Access to Faster Internet Connection
City wired with fiber-optic network that has been “overlooked”
(Baltimore Business Journal November 2007)
A growing Internet networking company is bringing Baltimore’s infrastructure into the 21st century, well ahead of most of the rest of the United States.
Litecast, LLC a Canton based company has built a $1.8 million, 25 mile network of fiber-optic cables through downtown Baltimore that offers broadband Internet at speeds hundreds of times faster than on typical broadband networks that have grown in capacity but are still run across telephone-era copper wires, said Mark Wagner, one of the company’s three partners.
In parts of Asia, 20 percent to 40 percent of businesses are on networks like Litecast’s , while the level is only 2 percent in the U.S. – putting Baltimore in elite company, among the likes of New York and the San Francisco Bay area, said Ann Lansinger, Executive Director of Baltimore’s Emerging Technology Center incubator, where Litecast is a resident.
“In cities like Baltimore, it’s been overlooked because it’s expensive,” Wagner said.
While networks like Verizon’s Fios fiber optic network serve residential suburban areas, Wagner and his partners, Al Schuele and Mark Malpass, decided to bring the technology to city businesses during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.
Litecast’s infrastructure is a physical network that has been built up since the turn of the century, going underground into the city’s largest office buildings and even through a bore across the Inner Harbor. It offers significantly higher capacity for moving information – users can download an HD-quality movie in about 5 minutes, as opposed to 20 hours on a typical broadband connection or an older network, Wagner said. Costs for the Internet service start at about $500 a month, he said.
While Litecast has many major companies in the city as customers and is in key buildings, it’s still trying to get its name out there, Wagner said. While hooking up to the network requires a physical connection to be made from an office to the existing cables, it’s usually not a difficult endeavor anymore, Wagner said.
Phil Evaul, a property manager with Colliers Pinkard, said he refers tenants to Litecast for Internet service, especially when they need quick setup. For companies with simple bandwidth needs, the boosted speed may not be noticed, but Evaul said it’s valuable to tenants of his like a securities trading firm.
The evolution of typical business technology today demands capabilities to seamlessly share “huge files” and do things like video conferencing, Wagner said.
“It’s all bandwidth: that’s the only thing that you need, “ Wagner said. “That’s the future.”
