Janke

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Donald Janke

President

Internet Ventures Inc.

Redondo Beach

When Donald Janke was a 15-year-old in his home town of Black River Falls, Wis., he dreamed of being the deejay for an afternoon rock ‘n’ roll radio show. Not an uncommon fantasy for a teen-ager but unlike most other such dreamers, Janke made it happen.

“When I first proposed to (the general manager) that he should have a rock show, he kind of patted me on the head and said there wouldn’t be any advertisers,” recalls Janke. “So I went to this clothing store and told the manager that the kids would come to his store if he were to advertise on my show.”

He’s bringing the same creativity to bear in a David vs. Goliath battle with some of the world’s biggest communications concerns. His company, Internet Ventures Inc., is in the forefront of the fight to force cable giants to lease space on their lines to Internet service providers, taking on AT & T; Corp. and Time Warner.

“He is very tenacious,” said Josette Bonte, vice president for new-media and entertainment practices with consulting firm RHK Inc. “Even if a deal takes six months to work out, he will stay on top of it all the time.”

A veteran of the cable and Internet industry, Janke started IVI in 1995 to buy up smallish ISPs in markets ignored by larger players and offer subscribers high-speed Internet access by using a combination of telephone and one-way cable lines. The company has 35,000 subscribers, mainly in communities on the West Coast such as Ventura and Spokane, Wash.

While giant ISPs like America Online fight for essentially free access to cable networks owned by AT & T;, IVI has come up with its own approach. Janke, 48, has asked cable operators in 10 markets to provide his company with leased-access space on their networks. Under federal law, cable providers must offer such access to companies that want to transmit video programming but no one has ever applied the leased-access laws to Internet service. His argument is that the high-speed Internet experience should be considered synonymous with video programming.

Some operators already have denied the requests, prompting Janke to appeal to the Federal Communications Commission. He plans to keep fighting the issue, in court if necessary.

Rather than relying on venture capital to build his business, Janke has raised $10 million through a direct public offering, a relatively new way of going public that does not require the services of an investment bank. Because DPOs typically aim at private investors, IVI has only 1,200 shareholders, many of them employees.

Edvard Pettersson

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