World Wide Packets Inc., a Spokane start-up company thats developing and plans to manufacture gigabit networking equipment, is planning to open an engineering office in Portland, Ore., and also expects to double its employment here within the next six months.


Bernard Daines, World Wide Packets founder and CEO, says that the company, which already has hired six people from the Portland area who will work at its office there, currently is looking to lease about 10,000 square feet of space in the Oregon city. He says that facility, which mostly will handle microchip design, likely will employ about 20 people by the end of this summer.


Daines says that plans for a Portland facility are being pursued because World Wide Packets found a number of quality workers in the Portland area, but those people preferred to remain there rather than relocate to Spokane.


We decided its just as easy to have them there as it is to have them here, Daines says.


Gigabit networking equipment is computer-related data-transmission hardware that connects an end user to the Internet at extremely fast speedsup to a billion bits per second.


Meanwhile, World Wide Packets, which employed 10 people here in January, now employs about 50 here and expects to employ 100 in Spokane by the end of the year, Daines says. He says that the company mostly is looking for people to fill engineering and some marketing positions. The engineering positions offer salaries in the high five-figure and low six-figure range, he says.


We have to be willing to pay the same salaries as theyre paying in the Silicon Valley. Theyre just getting crazy down there, Daines says.


Paul Capano, World Wide Packets human resources director, says the company is having success recruiting people to Spokane from the Silicon Valley and Seattle, as well as from cities in Colorado and Texas. He says the company has been hiring about 10 people a month since January, and he expects that hiring rate to continueand for the company likely to become more aggressivethrough the rest of this year and into next year.


Eventually, World Wide Packets expects to employ as many as 200 people here, including about 20 production workers, and another 60 employees elsewhere, such as at the Portland facility and at sales offices scattered across the U.S., Capano says. He says the company hopes to begin manufacturing its product by the end of the year.


Daines, who founded and later sold Packet Engines Inc. here, also launched a web-based company called Webiness Inc.