To wire or not to wire? That is the question IntelliSpace answers when it decides whether to install online services in a building.
The New York-based company works with commercial real estate managers, analyzing commercial buildings and multiple dwelling units, to see if these buildings have the electrical capacity for high-speed Internet and online services infrastructure.
Since its inception in 1994, more than 3,000 buildings nationwide have been wired with IntelliSpace’s online services equipment.
And now it has made its way to San Diego.
“The San Diego area is doing very well,” said Carlo Lalomia, chief technical officer for IntelliSpace.
IntelliSpace also has offices in Orange County and Los Angeles.
The company established its presence here in October, and with nearly a year of business under its belt, prospects are looking up.
There are 130 local buildings online with IntelliSpace equipment, with more waiting to be brought on board, according to Lalomia.
– Expanding Client Base
“There is a strong technology force in San Diego,” Lalomia said, whose clientele includes biotechnology companies, as well as professional service firms.
“As we’re getting bigger, we’re attracting larger companies,” he said.
As of March, the company had $65 million in equity investments.
Some of the company’s largest national accounts, such as Southwest Value Partners, Stepstone Realty and Kennedy Wilson, are located in San Diego.
For Lalomia, the popularity of IntelliSpace lies in the marketing.
“We offer a comprehensive package, that’s simple we take care of everything in advance,” he said.
The company pre-wires vacant buildings using dark fiber optics purchased from utility companies. Once the infrastructure is completed, the buildings’ network systems are directly connected to IntelliSpace’s global Internet network.
The company also offers a bandwidth solution, called e-Valve, which allows a user to tailor the amount of capacity that supports all company users on the network within a matter of minutes. A solution that Lalomia said would cost a fortune for a company to try to do on its own.
With a building infrastructure already in place when a customer approaches a real estate manager to lease or purchase, IntelliSpace can sell its system to a customer within three to five days, Lalomia said.
– Service Affects Property Values
One of the advantages of using IntelliSpace as an Internet provider is that it drives up the property value of a building, he said.
“Buildings that have it, instantly become more attractive than those that don’t,” he said.
It takes two months to get a building online and around 11 months for it to become profitable, meaning the building has been sold or leased, and tenants are paying rent.
Once the building is profitable, IntelliSpace offers the real estate manager a five to 10 percentage share of the revenue.
The average cost of the system goes for less than $25,000.
“We offer reliability and flexibility all at a lower cost,” Lalomia said of factors companies usually don’t receive if they try to install infrastructure on their own.
According to Lalomia, companies will have to purchase a router to connect to a network and pay a service provider for the amount of access and conductivity for the system. The whole process can take up to 12 weeks to be completed.
This can lead to high costs and multiple points of failure, he said.
Will Thomson, chief technical officer for Encinitas-based Enterprise Design Group, experienced this scenario firsthand.
Several days after moving into its new office building, the Internet service provider the company was using went out of business.
Relying on a flier advertisement about IntelliSpace, Thomson said after one phone call, he was hooked.
“Within a day, they (IntelliSpace) had us up and running, because the building was already pre-wired,” he said.
Thomson added that IntelliSpace offered less expensive prices on online services compared to prices quoted from other service providers.
“Everybody doesn’t have to pay a ‘loop pay charge’ , the fee you pay a phone company on top of the charges you pay to your service provider,” Thomson said. “Everyone in the building saves.”
With positive feedback from customers and a growing number of clients, IntelliSpace has gone global.
In September, IntelliSpace opened shop in the United Kingdom, with 376 buildings under its belt.
“It’s all been so successful hopefully, we’ll look forward to more expanding,” Lalomia said.
