Israeli start-up OnePath Networks today announced it has signed an agreement with US service provider NWS to supply its iPath product in several US and Canadian cities. NWS service multi-tenant apartment buildings. The multi-year deal is worth several million dollars a year.
iPath allows television and data transmission over the same cable line to apartment blocks.
OnePath Networks also announced the appointment of company founder Howard Loboda as CEO, and the return of its headquarters from Princeton, New Jersey, to Jerusalem, where the company's development center is based.
Sources inform ''Globes'' that OnePath Networks will lay off 20 employees, mostly in Israel, following the abandonment of its HomePath product line, whose sales do not justify its marketing. HomePath was designed for the private home market. In April, the company laid off 50 employees, mostly in Israel, and now has a staff of about 100.
Loboda says the global telecom crisis forced the company to concentrate on existing products, which had less than $10 million in sales last year. He said the company expects to have double-digit million sales this year. Loboda also said the company's equity is adequate until it reaches profitability next year, and no further financing round is required.
OnePath Networks was founded in 1993, under the name Foxcom, by Loboda, who earlier was a senior executive at Ortel, which was sold to Lucent for $3.5 billion. In 1998, the company spun off its wireless operations, founding Foxcom Wireless, later renamed OnePath Networks.
In May 2000, the company raised $40 million from JP Morgan, Oppenheimer, Genesis Investment Funds, Apax Israel and Israel Seed Partners. Other investors in the company include AIG-Orion, Eurofund LP, Patricof & Co. Ventures, and Aurum SBC Ventures (the investment arm of Aurec and SBC).
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 24 July 2001