Its like this: Every day, company President/CEO Greg Gammon tools to work in style driving a new BMW Z3 Roadster reminiscing about the days before etherSPLIT. It's when he walks in the doors of the expansive company headquarters, adorned in Italian marble and imported cherry wood, that Gammon thinks he's still in a dream world.

Horns honking. Light is green. Gammon returns to reality. He gives the '96 (sporadically dented) Jeep Cherokee. He hits the gas and shortly arrives at the rather austere company headquarters in College Station, Texas for yet another day of pushing what he and Vice President/CTO Tom Dodge believe is the next great mousetrap for multi-housing ISPs: etherSPLIT.

Dodge and Gammon formed QLynk Communications, Inc. in 2000 to do what most of QLynk's current customers are doing: providing fast Internet access to MDU (multi dwelling unit) properties like apartments and hotels. It was not long into the process of planning installations that both quickly realized the enormous costs they were facing in using DSL technologies, or rewiring existing structures. Orders for their Ferrari and Beemer were canceled.

Faced with the challenge of finding a more cost-effective way to provision services, the two entrepreneurs developed the concept for what is now called etherSPLIT. Countless hours of engineering, testing, redesigning, scrapping unusable prototypes, and tooling new designs were rewarded with the eventual development and certification of the etherSPLIT system that uses existing phone wire to transport Ethernet and telephone. The system was (and is) radically different from any other retrofit approach and its low cost made it feasible to again look at retrofitting existing properties.

With this realization, Dodge and Gammon quickly regrouped the company and turned its emphasis on development, engineering, manufacturing, and distribution of etherSPLIT. QLynk still maintains a small multi-housing ISP operation near its home base, primarily as a testing and proving ground for not only the etherSPLIT system (and related software and hardware technologies), but also for basic business modeling in the multi-housing service arena.

The etherSPLIT web portal is continually barraged with questions from eager ISPs not only looking at the new technology but also trying to ascertain profitable business models. Gammon and Dodge are eager to share their insights from QLynk beta sites as well as information gained from the hundreds of ISPs nationwide and worldwide that have contacted QLynk.

Since its market introduction in April 2001, etherSPLIT has been deployed everywhere from Australia to Nigeria, with the bulk of distribution in North America. Gammon and Dodge continue to muse over the unexpected turn the company took near the end of 2000 as the etherSPLIT concept was finalized. Both are reminded of the company's origins as they receive regular input from smaller ISPs who have commented favorably on finding the affordable solution they need to make money in a competitive market.

Even the "big boys", a term Dodge uses to compare the relatively small QLynk to national and international concerns, are beginning to take notice of the technology. Gammon and Dodge eagerly await delivery of the Italian Marble, imported cherry wood, and fast company cars. To contribute to their cause, just visit www.etherSPLIT.com