The 600,000 square foot One America Plaza, which stands out as a symbol of the San Diego skyline, announced today what is believed to be the first "building owned" wired and wireless network in a multi-tenant building in the United States.

"This is truly a ‘next gen building’," said Matthew T. Spathas, partner of SENTRE Partners, whose firm teamed up with GE Asset Management in November of last year to purchase the building. A world class team has been working on this "paradigm changing" concept.....which was initially launched by SENTRE, Bandwidth Now, and Intel, with input from Corning and Cisco.

"Our concept is really simple...provide bandwidth as the 4th utility and Wi-Fi (wireless internet) as an amenity," says Spathas. "By installing a common, agnostic network, called a ‘Building Optical Network’ (BON) which is paid for and owned by the building owner, One America Plaza can deliver up to gigabit network speeds at a fraction of the cost. Additionally, and as important, Wi-Fi will be provided throughout the entire building as an amenity," adds Spathas.

"The real estate industry needs to help set the agenda," Spathas says. "This is really no different than the move from kerosene to electricity or stairs to elevators. Owners did not rely on third parties to pay for, install, and own the electrical network or the elevator system. We would be crazy to let a third party own this essential building infrastructure. Optical wires and switches should be treated like electrical wires and the transformer…owned by the building, managed by a third party for the benefit of our tenants. Bandwidth is purchased in bulk off the bandwidth grid in the same manner power is purchased off the power grid."

Tenants of One America Plaza will enjoy "wired" plug and play connectivity to the Internet which will burst up to 100 Mbps for only $250 per month. This is approximately 60 times faster and 1/5th the cost of a typical T-1 (1.5 Mbps) connection. Additionally, the entire building (34 floors and all 4 levels of below grade parking) will be Wi-Fi (wireless) enabled. Wi-Fi use will be offered at no charge to One America Plaza tenants, guests, and visitors. "We believe this is the first building in the US to deploy wireless in every square inch of the building and parking garage. We have moved from the concept of ‘Hot Spot’ to ‘Hot Building’. Our tenants thought free Wi-Fi was cool in the public places, but they really wanted it in their office space," Spathas added.

Utilizing the deployment, tenants, guests, and visitors will be able to turn on a laptop, PDA or web tablet and immediately be on the net. If you can get on the net, you likely can get on your network. "Our tenants, their clients, and visitors won’t be crawling behind credenzas looking for a dial up connection", adds Rob Jones, building manager at One America Plaza.

Making the system even more unique, SENTRE will deploy numerous back end uses to better serve its tenants. One example includes a web based work order system, utilizing the wireless infrastructure. "Our engineers will carry web tablets and Pocket PC’s, opening and closing tenant work orders on the spot. No more forms in triplicate," says lead building engineer Reese Layton. "We will also use the wireless infrastructure in the deployment of wireless web enabled security cameras and voice over IP communication," adds Layton.

SENTRE Partners is a San Diego based real estate investment and services company who manages, leases, and / or owns assets in excess of $500 million. SENTRE’s value added strategy is simple...putting purpose and technology into real estate.

Wireless Facilities Inc. is responsible for the installation, deployment, and network management. WFI is the leading independent provider of network outsourcing solutions for the wireless telecommunications industry.

San Diego based Bandwidth Now, a market leader in Next Gen building networks, will handle front end provisioning for the network. Other Bandwidth Now buildings in San Diego include the San Diego Tech Center, the NBC Building, and the SBC Building.