The Internet economy is exploding, and with it comes the demand for high-speed Internet access to the average home. And with that, according to the executives at Voyan, will also come the need for their technology. The pace at which the cubicles and corner offices at Voyan get filled should match the pace of widespread adoption of broadband connections into the home.

That's because Voyan claims to be able to solve a problem that nobody else has even addressed, they can prevent a bottleneck within the telecommunications infrastructure that even the phone companies have not tried to tackle. Voyan can make digital subscriber lines, one of the two leading contenders to deliver broadband services to the home, run at higher speeds, for greater distances and with fewer problems. And that is exactly what the Internet economy demands.

"This kind of technology is going to be essential for squeezing the most performance out of copper wiring," said Jeannine Sargent, president and CEO of the company. "It will be indispensable when it comes to making broadband access available to the most people, at the lowest cost and with the highest reliability."

Both traditional telephone companies and the independent telecommunications vendors trying to jump into the broadband market are hyping DSL technology as the next great thing. With existing wiring, the format allows a digital data stream at rates as high as several Mbytes-per-second to be piggybacked onto the standard voice traffic. Users can surf the Net while talking on the phone, on the same channel. Best of all, the Internet connection can stay up at all times. All of this is a major step forward from basic analog modems that requires a dial-up connection, monopolized the phone line and were frequently disconnected.

From both the business and technology perspective, there is little to dislike and consumers are signing up in droves wherever the service is available, although the current availability rates are rather low. But there is a problem looming on the horizon.

In general, explains Peter Santos, vice president of marketing at Voyan, telephone wires from neighboring homes and businesses are strung together in bundles under the ground.

Depending on the density of a neighborhood, there could be anywhere from 50 to 100 individual strands of twisted-pair wires, and each one is a single phone line. Those lines were designed to carry voice traffic, not the higher power digital data streams that they are now being asked to carry. And with more power on the wire, the signals from the various lines in a bundle are starting to interfere with each other, just from sitting next to each other.

"Interference is becoming a problem, and it is only going to get more severe," he said.

This interference can limit the bandwidth of a line, or cut the maximum range it can reach between the consumer and the telephone company central office. At the moment, there are no restrictions on the kinds of wiring that may be placed into each bundle, and since they have generally been buried underground since they were first installed years ago, there is little chance of modifying the infrastructure. "The industry is worried about this," he added.

Voyan's solution to this problem is a proprietary software that can analyze each channel, determine what kind of interference is affecting it, and then negate the effects of that interference. While current DSL technology can create data streams running at several Mbytes/second, depending upon which particular DSL format is used, that is under perfect conditions. In the real world, most phone companies are offering asymmetric DSL (ADSL) at rates ranging from 128 kbits-per-second up to about 500 kbits/s.

The reasons for the discrepancy are simple: while some customers may have wiring in excellent condition, and may be located just down the block from the central office, others may have poor wiring or live miles away from the phone company. As a business, the phone companies have to guarantee a minimum level of service which means that the lowest possible level for customers living far from the central office is what everyone will get, even though many consumers could easily receive better service. Santos said that by eliminating line interference, Voyan's software can allow DSL connections to deliver their best possible rates to everybody.

One of the problems with DSL now is that installing each individual line can be a time-consuming process, as the phone companies must manually verify that each set of copper wiring is up to the task. Interference from a wide variety of sources, including other wires in the bundle and other telecommunications equipment that, over the years, have been added to a line, can cause problems, and it takes time to evaluate and correct them. In some cases, the problems can't be correctly identified, and the customer is told they can't have DSL service, which is not good for customer relations.

But Voyan's software can make this process go faster, which means more people have access to the service in less time, which means more revenue. The company estimates that a major telecom provider with 30,000 DSLAM systems, the units where each individual DSL connection terminates, could grow its customer base to six million DSL connections in five years on its own, but with Voyan technology at work it could increase that number to seven million lines in the same period. With many customers paying $40 to $50 per month for the service, that's an increased revenue stream of up to $50 million per month.

"Anytime you can automate that process, it's a big help," noted Kathie Hackler, principal analyst for remote access at Gartner Dataquest (San Jose). "The phone companies need to have clean copper wiring, and they need to know if they've got it. Voyan's technology seems very attractive."

The technology is the brainchild of Sunil Shah, co-chairman and chief technology officer, who came up with the idea and then brought on Sargent, Santos and others to turn it into a business. "This technology is applicable to many different areas, but we decided that DSL would be the best place to start," he said. "The problem we are addressing is right in the pain zone for a lot of companies. The more pain points there are with our customers, the more opportunities there will be for us."

The Voyan software can be used in several different places. They hope to sell it to chip companies that produce ICs for use in DSL systems, expecting to collect a per-chip royalty. They also want DSLAM vendors to implement it into their systems even if they are using chips without the Voyan technology, and Santos said they expect to collect a royalty based on the total number of DSL connections each DSLAM can support. Finally, they are hoping the telecommunications provider will also sign onto the Voyan program by using it to evaluate and improve all of their lines.

Although the company will not discuss their royalty rates, they expect that their potential revenues will be significant, simply based on the increased revenues for phone companies using their technology. And most importantly, they don't seem to have any competition.

"I don't know of anybody else working on this problem," said Sargent.

Analyst Hackler agreed, saying that she has not heard of any other firms attempting to solve this problem. "They are the only company I know of that is trying to build a business around this issue," she said.

Voyan expects to have its technology available in volume next year, and said customers are evaluating it this year. Santos said initial interest is very high. And as the use of broadband grows, interest should grow higher.

Dataquest estimates that less than 1 percent of U.S. households currently have a broadband connection, using DSL, cable modems, or some type of wireless link. That should swell to 26 percent of all residences by the year 2004. Not only does that mean there is a huge potential market for Voyan to tap into, as that market grows, the need for its technology will also increase.

And looking beyond DSL, the company also plans to enter the wireless market in the future. Interference can limit the performance of a wireless connection,and Santos said that makes it an ideal target market. But that is far in the future. For the moment, the company just wants to complete the launch of this software product and start filling up some of those empty cubicles.