iUHBA’s audacious 10G broadband plan

The technology

It’s not entirely clear how iUHBA’s technology will support its model. Though its plans are a decade in the making, its proprietary technology consists of four patents (one of which is still pending) it acquired from Photonics On-Fiber Devices, whose chief executive officer, Mahmoud El-Sherif, a former research professor of materials, electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia, is now iUHBA’s vice chairman.

According to iUHBA, the technology in those patents allows modulators, switches, couplers, and multiplexers to manipulate signals in the optical domain without requiring repeated conversion into electrical signals and back. It does this by replacing sections of the fiber’s cladding material with a multi-layered structure of active materials including an EO polymer licensed from the University of Washington that can manipulate the optical signals.

“The optical fiber is used as a communication link as well as an active device,” an iUHBA white paper said.

That also makes it easy for remote nodes to be added anywhere in the fiber, to increase capacity in response to need, iUHBA said. “Upgrading of the infrastructure is basically achieved by replacing (or tuning) some active devices at certain key nodes to a higher speed or bandwidth, at minimal costs.”

iUHBA is also in the process of buying another group of patents related to wireless broadband gear that will allow it to create its own wireless access gear as well. (Another paper published online says iUHBA wants to license keypad technology “that will change the way people use their handsets, PDAs and smartphones. The difference is mainly in the technology behind the keypad, which will allow faster and more efficient use of the keys on the devices to write text and emails or to chat more efficiently because of the ‘ease of use.’”)

“Mid-next year, after we have the big funding in place, we’ll have 50 to 60 patents,” Lachman said. “We’ll see whatever we use.”

The CEO

Lachman’s bold ambitions have given plenty of fuel to critics, including his stated goal to become the world’s richest man, which he says was just “tongue in cheek.”

In 2004, the Kansas City Business Journal took Lachman to task for his $3.5-billion proposal to build, among other things, the world’s tallest building in Kansas City despite having never been to the city nor having any experience in real estate. Lachman referred to that article this way in a blog post this May: “I was proposing a big project, which was too big for this pea-brained reporter to grasp.”

Sparring online with skeptics, Lachman has earned a reputation for pushing back when questioned. For example, when asked by this reporter about his educational background, he replied, “What does my education has to do with real life? I didn’t know I was subjecting myself to a personal and psycho-analysis…It shows weakness from your side to ask me about education while this is a telecommunications company where I can hire the best of brains.”

Lachman entered the business world at 18 without a college degree, running a restaurant and then a publishing business, both of which failed – the former, he said, because he was too young, and the latter because the competition had spread lies about him. After helping to develop Indian satellite TV networks in the 90s, Lachman and his brothers founded a satellite-based ISP called InternetHyperGate that backed out of a planned $100-million IPO, he said, when, “We realized that our promises could maybe not be met because of the lack of transponder capacity [and] that doing an IPO while knowing that we may not be able to keep our promises would be fraudulent...We completely blew things off in 2000.”

In 2001, he led LBDC International, which proposed building 5-Mb/s symmetrical fiber connections to six million homes in 25 US cities. Years later, LBDC mulled city-wide WiFi in 25 markets. In 2007, Lachman sought investment for GigaSpeed International, which became iUHBA.

Along the way, Lachman became acquainted with some notable names that he would ultimately add to iUHBA’s management team, including Verizon and HP alum David Croslin, iUHBA’s chief technology officer, and telecom industry veteran Farooq Malik, its chief operating officer (as well as Lachman’s replacement as LBDC’s CEO in 2006). In addition, iUHBA cites as its chief strategy officer Michael Brown, who famously led the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina.

iUHBA plans to raise its first $1.5 billion with help from Lachman & Malik Capital Partners, a private equity firm founded by its two namesakes that Lachman said is now being “cleaned up” after a two-year dormant stage. “Dusting of the layers of dust: Re-establishing the Website, setting up offices, getting a management team in place, re-establishing a bank account,” he said.

“The companies that we had over time have been metamorphosed into what is now called iUHBA Networks,” Lachman said. “All those companies have been either [sic] paid for by other activities. And much of the management has been rewarded with equity rather than paid for last few years. It’s all a belief in that we’re going to hit the jackpot with the fiber broadband strategy now.”