Spokane-area high-tech entrepreneur Bernard Daines has launched a company here that is breathing life into an underutilized Liberty Lake building as a broadband Internet paradise.


The new company, Liberty Lake Internet Exchange LLC, or LLIX for short, will take advantage of a roughly 25,000-square-foot building at 23403 E. Mission that once had been home to Webiness Inc. and World Wide Packets Inc., both also started by Daines.


Daines and his wife, Marsha, bought the building in early 2000, when it was less than half its current size, and expanded the structure to have all the amenities needed by high-end users of broadband connectivity. The couple own the building through a company called Liberty Lake Internet Portal LLC, which is carving up some of the interior space in the structure to accommodate smaller tenants that need such amenities.


LLIX, meanwhile, was launched this month and offers a variety of high-tech services ranging from Internet access to server co-location to data storage and disaster recovery, says Greg Zemp, facilities director there and one of Daines three minority partners in LLIX.


Bernard envisioned this building as a regional Internet center, Zemp says.


One of the ventures services is marketed under the name WebBand, which is an Internet service provider (ISP) that offers both dial-up Internet access to consumers and business-grade high-speed wireless Internet access.


WebBand launched Nov. 15, and offers dial-up accounts for $8.95 a month, with a $13.95 premium service that includes data-compression technology that boosts download speeds.


Its high-speed wireless network uses the Motorola Canopy technology, which operates at 5.7 gigahertz frequency, rather than the weaker, 2.4 gigahertz connections used more commonly today for wireless Internet. WebBands roof-mounted antenna can carry wireless signals up to a 10-mile radius, which should cover most of the Spokane Valley and into Kootenai County, says Dan Seliger, another partner in the company.


The new ISP offers a 1.5 megabits-per-second connection for $149 a month, and a 768 kilobit connection for $79 monthly.


Meanwhile, LLIX has begun marketing the buildings 6,500-square-foot data center, which is located in the structures basement and includes rows of computer-server racks.


The company plans to market the center for a variety of uses, including as a place for other ISPs to locate their Internet servers, a home for corporate Web-site servers, and a place where companies can store or back up dataor even set up duplicative servers onto which they could switch their computer operations in the event of a disaster at their own data centers.


To buttress those capabilities, LLIX equipped the building with a 2,500-amp electrical service, 100 tons of air-conditioning capacity, an industrial-size backup battery system, and a big Cummins diesel-powered backup generator.


The center also is equipped with four fiber-optic lines, two each from XO Communications and Electric Lightwave, that enter and leave the building from different directions.


That, says Zemp, provides redundancy in connection in case a line is severed along one of those fiber providers networks. LLIX plans to add two more lines within a year, he says.


One of LLIXs first clients is Community Cable Service, which provides cable-TV service in Liberty Lake. Zemp says the cable company is contracting with LLIX to provide high-speed Internet connections to its subscribers.


Seliger says LLIX wants to be considered an alternative to companies that use the U.S. Bank Building downtown to house their Internet-based servers and cross-connect facilities.


That building is known for its use in that way.


Meanwhile, Daines is marketing the rest of the building to companies that need the kind of high-tech infrastructure it boasts.


Work is being done to prepare the buildings east wing, which is the original structure, for smaller tenants. In addition to a dental practice that has leased about 2,700 square feet of space there since before the building was expanded, the structure mostly has been used by tenants that utilized open floor plans full of cubicles. Much of that space has been vacant for want of a new, larger tenant, Zemp says.


Weve had a lot of calls from people who wanted just 500 square feet, says Zemp.


With the new broken-up configuration, the building already has attracted a couple of smaller tenantsa tiny western regional office for a national sales organization and an 1,100-square-foot tenant called Venture Design Services Inc.


Daines, who moved Packet Engines Inc. here from Silicon Valley and later sold the gigabit-Ethernet equipment maker to Alcatel for $315 million, also founded World Wide Packets and Webiness, which didnt find similar success.