Michael McCullough - Sun Business Reporter
Just a couple of millimeters wide, the cable running into the basement at 134 Abbott Street packs a real punch.
"It's at least 10 times faster, probably closer to 100 times faster than what we had before," enthuses Peter van der Gracht, CEO of Wavemakers Research, a developer of voice-recognition software.
He's talking about a new direct Internet connection offered by fibre optic firm TeraSpan Networks, specifically designed for heritage structures, such as this 1928 building in Gastown.
Webheads and multimedia artists have a name for their preferred kind of workspace: bricks 'n' sticks. Maybe it's the desire to set themselves apart from the glass-and-concrete corporate world, but young techies are drawn to converted warehouses with timber beams and bare brick walls.
However, these buildings often prove difficult to wire for high-speed Internet access without shredding cobbled streets and compromising their heritage character.
TeraSpan, a new company, has found a different way. All that's seen of TeraSpan's "surface inlaid cable" running from a server at the foot of Granville Street to 134 Abbott is a line in the pavement about as wide as a saw blade.
With the support of the City of Vancouver and the Gastown Business Improvement Society, TeraSpan is offering a direct internet connection to three of the building's occupants, Wavemakers, Cinax Designs and Inform Interiors.
Wavemakers, which has been using the service for two weeks now, processes large audio files in a fraction of the time it took on a cable modem, says van der Gracht.
"Everybody wants high-speed access," he says.
"What TeraSpan has done is take it to places it hasn't been before."
"The connection is as fast as you want it to be. There's virtually no limitations," says Darren Dofher, TeraSpan's president and CEO.
A former network specialist for large service providers, Dofher is coy about the technology involved, but he says it's about 20 times cheaper to install than broadband systems offered by Telus and other service providers.
That's music to the ears of Gastown landlords. Obtaining high-speed access has been "a huge struggle for property owners all over the city," but especially for owners of heritage buildings, says Jon Stovell, president of the Gastown Business Improvement Society.
He estimates there is 300,000 to 400,000 square feet of vacant warehouse space in the neighborhood that could be converted into high-tech office space if not for the high costs involved.
Virtually all the space already converted is occupied, he says.
If TeraSpan succeeds in offering its service on a commercial basis over the coming year or so, those costs may begin to decline.