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<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Pat Kennedy believes high-speed <br />communication is so essential to business that <br />he is spending $3 million of his own money to <br />build a fiber-optic loop in his hometown of San <br />Leandro. The move is intended to help his <br />software company expand and ramp up the <br />technology industry in the East Bay. <br /> <br />Mr. Kennedy is chief executive of OSIsoft LLC, <br />which does data monitoring for utilities, <br />refineries and "anything with a smokestack." His <br />company moves large amounts of data over the <br />Internet each day and its data needs are <br />growing. <br /> <br />About a year ago, Mr. Kennedy says, he <br />decided he needed to do something to <br />accommodate his company's growth in San <br />Leandro. With the city's blessing, he set up a <br />company called Lit San Leandro that is creating <br />an 11-mile fiber-optic loop to ring the industrial <br />zone on the western side of the city. <br /> <br />Fiber-optic systems transmit data down glass <br />wires with pulses of light from lasers, offering <br />speeds that are at least 100 times as fast as the <br />level of broadband service typically offered to <br />homes. For example, a fiber-optic loop can <br />download a movie in roughly one second, says <br />Judi Clark, a telecommunications consultant <br />who is working with Lit San Leandro. And it <br />offers equally fast upload and download speeds. <br />The first piece of fiber, which serves OSIsoft, <br />was activated on March 2. Mr. Kennedy expects <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />the whole loop—which will be marketed to <br />businesses but not individuals—to be completed <br />in a few months. <br /> <br />Mr. Kennedy and city officials hope the loop will <br />attract tech companies to San Leandro that <br />might otherwise gravitate to Silicon Valley, <br />where cities like Palo Alto and Santa Clara <br />already have their own loops for tech giants like <br />Intel Corp. and Oracle Corp. "It's a honey pot to <br />attract innovators," he says. <br /> <br />Real-estate experts say San Leandro might be a <br />hard sell for some tech companies that want <br />easy access to Silicon Valley's labor force. Even <br />though San Leandro has two BART commuter <br />rail stations, the line doesn't include Santa Clara <br />County, so commuters would need to cross San <br />Francisco Bay on often-congested freeways. <br /> <br />Mr. Kennedy agrees San Leandro is more easily <br />reached from other parts of the Bay Area and it <br />doesn't have the cachet of Silicon Valley, but <br />says the city of 85,000 has amenities that <br />I N S AN L EANDRO, <br />A D RIVE T O G ET W IRED <br /> <br /> <br />March 14, 2012 <br />By Rebecca Smith <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />San Leandro, CA <br />