SENTRE Partners announced today that the 650,000 square foot San Diego Tech Center San Diego will be the next “next gen” building in San Diego. San Diego Tech Center will follow the innovative lead of other SENTRE projects including One America Plaza, the NBC Building, SBC Building and the San Diego Tech Center.

"We continue to define a ‘next gen building’," said Matthew T. Spathas, Partner of SENTRE Partners, whose firm manages the building on behalf of RREEF. 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 tenants 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, San Diego Tech Center 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.

San Diego Tech Center will be the third building in the SENTRE portfolio to obtain Intel® Centrino™ mobile technology certification. Centrino is Intel's new technology designed specifically for mobile computing with integrated wireless LAN capability and breakthrough mobile performance.

SENTRE is exploring a host of other new services to provide it's tenants including video conferencing to the PC, Managed IP Telephony and Managed IT Services in an effort to increase tenant productivity and drive down tenant IT costs.

"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 San Diego Tech Center enjoy "wired" plug and play connectivity to the Internet which will burst up to 10 Mbps for only $350 per month. This is approximately 6 times faster a fraction of the cost of a typical T-1 (1.5 Mbps) connection. Additionally, all public space and common areas (all 38 acres) are Wi-Fi (wireless) enabled. Wi-Fi use will is offered at no charge to San Diego Tech Center tenants, guests, and visitors.

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 John Brand, a SENTRE Partner and manager at San Diego Tech Center.

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", adds Brand.

SENTRE Partners is a San Diego based real estate investment and services company who manages, leases, and / or owns assets in excess of $600 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.

For more information, see www.bandwidthnow.com and Cisco News.