Telecom Engineering Firm Sees Rapid Growth in the Face of Faltering Industry
The shakeout in local Internet and related tech companies doesn’t seem to be threatening some firms, which are increasing staff and trying to keep up with an expanded workload.
The picture at Rancho Bernardo-based Cyberlane is one of rapid growth that shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
Cyberlane contracts telecommunications engineering, carrying out the basic research and design for much larger telecom manufacturers. More than three-fourths of the company’s staff are engineers.
An offshoot of Hyundai Electronics America Inc., the firm opened in 1997 with a skeleton staff of about 15 employees. Last year, it was spun off as an independent company with Hyundai maintaining a 10 percent stake. The majority of the company is owned by management and employees.
At the time it was spun off, Cyberlane had 41 employees. Today, the head count is more than 90 but less than 100; the exact figure keeps changing but is always on the rise, said President Byoung-Sik Jang.
“We started as an independent company at the right time when our industry is expanding and the technology is evolving,” said Jang, who has about 18 years in the information technology and telecom industries.
Cyberlane can barely keep up with all the projects it has on its plate because of the explosion in research and development occurring in the telecommunications sector, specifically involving CDMA, which stands for code division multiple access. CDMA is the wireless technology developed and championed by locally based Qualcomm Inc.
In The Wireless Valley
It is primarily because of Qualcomm and its leadership in CDMA that Hyundai Electronics was inspired to set up a research office here, Jang said. The company was originally established in San Jose, but relocated here after about six months.
“San Diego is known throughout the world now as the Wireless Valley, where the wireless technology originated,” Jang said. “Most of the wireless R & D; centers are located here, so we felt this was the right place to be.”
Indeed, San Diego’s telecommunications industry has continued to be one of the region’s major job-growth engines. Last year, the sector grew 4 percent to 28,440 people, making it the largest employer of technology professionals, according to a recent report by Alexander X, Inc., a local research and directory publishing firm.
Among the telecom global giants that have launched operations in San Diego in recent years are Ericsson, Nokia, LG, Motorola, Kyocera, Sony, Siemens and Texas Instruments. A good number are clustered in the Rancho Bernardo area.
While it’s clearly not the most common wireless technology in the world, CDMA has a huge advantage over competing technologies of GSM (global systems for mobile communications) and other systems because it can handle more subscribers within a specific area, said Charles Yu, Cyberlane’s vice president of sales and marketing.
Also, CDMA 2000, a next-generation of the current technology, is a more efficient conduit of voice and high-speed data than GSM, which needs an additional wireless technology to carry out those types of transmissions, Yu said.
Jang was reluctant to release the company’s largest customers, noting they have non-disclosure agreements, but one of the largest is Sewon, a South Korean manufacturer of some 8 million handset units annually.
New Designs
In addition to working on handset designs, the firm recently expanded its business to designing and creating special PC cards that enable laptop PCs and cell phones to have a wireless connection to the Internet.
The company’s engineers are also working on developing other wireless products related to high-speed data transmission via next-generation CDMA technology.
Last year, Cyberlane had some $6 million in revenues, and this year the company expects to reach about $40 million, Jang said.
To finish the many projects in the pipeline, they’ll need to hire more engineers and staff. He estimates the number will reach 120 people by year’s end.
A large number of Cyberlane’s engineers hail from South Korea because they are more familiar with CDMA technology and have more experience working with it, Jang said.
The Korean connection to CDMA is easy to explain. South Korea was one of the first nations to choose CDMA technology as the basic system for wireless phone transmission, starting in the mid-1990s. Cell phone usage is also among the highest in the world, with 60 percent penetration, Jang said.
In fact, it’s hard to find a standard, land-line public phone booth there, he said.
“And the funny thing is when you do see them, most people aren’t using them for the phone. They just close the booths behind them and use their own cell phones so they can hear better.”
The Nasdaq crash has had minimal impact on his business. Instead of cutting back, more firms are investing in R & D;, hoping to discover the newest technological device or make improvements on existing ones, he said.
“The larger players are looking for alternate solutions to maintain their growth or open up another business domain, and wireless is definitely in the center of this.”
