Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Coral Springs, Fla., Antenna Firms Get Strong Reception

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 19:53:35 -0400

Coral Springs, Fla., Antenna Firms Get Strong Reception
June 14, 2004 11:33pm
Knight-Ridder / Tribune Business News

Jun. 14--Howard Melamed loves to tell anecdotes, and he'll warn you when
you're about to hear a good one.
"Let me tell you a story," Melamed likes to say with the nervous energy
of someone who has consumed way too much caffeine. "You're going to like
this one."
His best story may be the success of his two Coral Springs companies,
CellAntenna Corp. and BoatAntenna.com Inc., which sell and install
devices to improve cell phone reception.

Sales at CellAntenna, the larger company, reached $2.5 million in 2003
and should pass $6 million this year, says Melamed. In the past few
months, he has traveled to China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Israel to meet
with manufacturers, and to Guatemala to set up a distributor for
CellAntenna's signal boosters and external antennas. Melamed has 12
employees and plans to hire two or three more in sales in the next six
months.

Most of CellAntenna's business comes from its Web site,
www.cellantenna.com. Its products range from a $25 antenna that mounts
to a car windshield to a $120,000 wireless Internet zone that
CellAntenna is building for the University of Miami School of Medicine.
The company also installs antennas for offices.

BoatAntenna, whose revenues last year were under $400,000, sells similar
equipment for marine craft.

Melamed's clients include the Army and Navy, New York City and Nextel
Partners. Melamed, a lifelong electronics junkie, also sells cell phone
jamming equipment to government and police agencies -- it is illegal for
anyone else in the United States to possess such equipment.

John Hart, a fleet analyst with the South Florida Water Management
District in West Palm Beach, says several district employees had been
complaining about dropped cell calls. He had heard from a friend about
signal boosters, and searched on the Internet, where he found
CellAntenna. Employees have noticed "a dramatic 100 percent improvement"
in reception, Hart says.

Melamed immigrated to Coral Springs from Montreal 13 years ago. In 2000,
while running Montfort, a Coral Springs construction company that he
still operates in a limited capacity, Melamed saw a niche largely
ignored by service providers and infrastructure companies.

"Most companies are too small to do this professionally or too big to
care about this market," he says.

He likes to tell a story of when he was starting CellAntenna. One night,
Melamed was driving to dinner with his wife, Barbara, the company's vice
president. His cell phone rang. The caller wanted to buy a signal
booster.

Melamed, eager to complete the sale and too embarrassed to admit that
the fledgling company didn't have a call center, told the customer: "Let
me connect you with customer service," and passed the phone to Barbara
in the front seat. She took the customer's order and hasn't stopped
since.

Melamed, who became a U.S. citizen in 2000, is also a local gadfly.

He posts his views and information about Coral Springs on his Web site,
www.coralsprings.com. In March, he lost his bid for a Coral Springs
commission seat.

But with his growing businesses, he has plenty to do. "Let me tell you,"
he says. "I'm having fun."

To see more of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel -- including its homes,
jobs, cars and other classified listings -- or to subscribe to the
newspaper, go to http://www.sun-sentinel.com.

Copyright © 2004

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