To help nurture startup companies, a new Internet hub and data center called CityNAP opened recently in downtown San Antonio.

The 10,000-square-foot business provides small to medium-sized companies with storage space for servers and other computer equipment in a temperature-controlled facility with backup power generators. It also provides access to several Internet service providers and has a fully wired conference room with a plasma display screen, which companies can use to make presentations or conduct meetings.

"I create the space and the marketplace, and then I get out of the way," said Frank R. Robles, founder of CityNAP. "It's also meant for people to take the server out of their broom closet and store it here."

Network access points such as CityNAP make the communications market more efficient, Robles said. A network access point is a major junction on the Internet where two or more backbone networks are connected through routers to transfer data, according to the New Penguin Dictionary of Computing. It reports that four major exchanges originally existed in Washington, D.C., Chicago, New Jersey and San Francisco, but now smaller private exchanges are proliferating worldwide.

Instead of having the latest telecommunications infrastructure wired into their building, small or medium-sized businesses can access the latest technology at CityNAP, Robles said.

Robles moved to San Antonio a few months ago from Palo Alto, Calif. He has founded several high-tech companies, including NanoSpace in 1999, later renamed Yipes Communications, a fiber optics network provider based in San Francisco. He also founded Oakstone Venture Partners, a venture capital investment firm, and Neopolitan Networks, an Internet service provider.

Robles decided to relocate his family to San Antonio after learning about its expanding high-technology base and talking with his friend Graham Weston, chief executive of Rackspace Managed Hosting. Robles signed a 40-year lease for CityNAP in a building that Weston owns.

During the late 1990s and earlier this decade, telecommunications companies built network access points in many major cities across the country. San Antonio got passed over. Now, it's getting a network access point in CityNAP that Robles expects will help foster high-tech startups.

"The city really needed this place," Robles said. "There wasn't any infrastructure to support small startup companies here."

So far, AT&T, Time Warner Telecom and Time Warner Cable, and Wil-Tel all provide network access to companies via CityNAP. Robles expects to install network access for Qwest, Neopolitan and AboveNet soon.

"We have others we are working on," he said.

Google is one of CityNAP's first customers. CityNAP is a secondary site for storage of the geographical data that Google provides on the Internet, Robles said.

CityNAP meets a need in San Antonio and contributes to the city's growing data center base, said Ramiro Cavazos, director of the city's economic development department.

"A network access point for the city is very harmonious to the city's and county's success in creating a concentration of data centers," said John Dascher, director of investment services with the San Antonio Technology Accelerator Initiative, a public-private technology advocate.

It's contributing to building the Internet infrastructure for San Antonio, and that's always a good thing, Dascher said.

San Antonio recently landed Lowe's Home Improvement's stand-alone data center, which will be built in Westover Hills. Other big companies including Microsoft are eyeing the city for data centers.

This is one of the top cities in the country for companies wanting to build a new data center, especially those in the financial industry, said John Boyd with Boyd Co., company location consultants based in Princeton, N.J.

"San Antonio is on a lot of companies' radar," said Boyd, who was in town earlier this week to meet with clients.

San Antonio has a robust telecommunications infrastructure; low operating costs, including affordable land and utilities; insulation from natural disasters; and a good quality of life, Boyd said.

As originally published, this story contained an error.