Sep. 29--TEWKSBURY -- Starent Networks Inc., a fast-growing maker of gear used by wireless carriers to offer enhanced voice and data services, has agreed to more than double its space at Ames Pond Corporate Center.

Starent has agreed in a new lease to increase its space from 16,000 square feet to 37,260 square feet in the two-building complex. Financial terms, including the length of the lease, were undisclosed.

"We've been busting at the seams," said Mike Messier, Starent's vice president of global human resources.

Messier said the company now has 288 people and occupies about 90,000 square feet between Ames Pond and its corporate headquarters down the road at 30 International Place. It employs just over 1,000 worldwide.

Messier said Starent still expects to hire 15 to 20 more people locally by year's end.

"Systems engineers, those that work with customers after sales are made, are in particular demand," he said, adding that Starent is also looking for hardware and software developers, marketing personnel and product developers.

Flory McCarthy, vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle, which handles leases and owns Ames Pond, said Starent's new lease makes it the complex's largest tenant.

Ames Pond is owned by Leggat McCall Properties, LLC, in a joint venture with Dead River Properties, LLC. The 154,200-square-foot property was built in 1988 for MetLife Inc. It is 79 percent leased to seven tenants, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

Starent's technology is used to enhance such cell-phone features as video, multimedia messaging and voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP. Its gateway hardware and proprietary software are designed to be an alternative to the combination of routers, switches and servers that mobile operators usually use when upgrading their networks.

Top customers include Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, Sprint and China Telecom.

Messier said that despite the recession, heavy demand for wireless products exists in third-world countries and in China and India.

"A lot of these places never had land line, and it appears they will leapfrog right to wireless," he said.

Starent is growing quickly. Revenues for the first six months of this year were almost $129 million, up 27.6 percent from the same period a year ago. Net income was almost $28 million (40 cents a share), up 19.3 percent.

Shares of Starent closed yesterday at $24.88 in Nasdaq trading. They've more than doubled since the start of this year

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