Lightbridge will be employing 250 people in Lynn, for a total of 650 new jobs coming to the city from various companies in the past six months, according to Lynn development director Stephen Harausz. The Lightbridge jobs are new positions for a call center; the company plans to keep its corporate headquarters in Burlington.

Lynn's Cyber District has been attracting technology companies to former manufacturing buildings in the city that have been renovated and rewired.

Shore.Net was the first technology company to locate in Lynn. In 1993, Shore.Net started to create the infrastructure that has attracted to Lynn other telecommunications companies, such as Vancouver-based 360 Networks, Connecticut-based Asset Channels Inc. and now Lightbridge Inc.

Shore.Net has since been purchase by Virginia-based Primus Telecommunications, which is adding another 200 jobs in Lynn. Eastern Bank recently purchased a 125,000-square-foot former Bell Atlantic building and is moving 200 jobs to Lynn.

"What we're seeing is other companies, companies that would make huge investments in equipment, looking at some of the other older buildings for Internet hotels," said Peter DeVeau, executive director of the Lynn Economic Development and Industrial Corp.

Asset Channels Inc. has made Lynn the starting point of a high-speed cable system on the Eastern Seaboard. A trans Atlantic switching cable being laid by 360 Networks will come onto land in Lynn as well.

"It really brings a whole other dimension to the city's infrastructure and it's future as a technology-base community," said Harausz. Rent in the Cyber District are $15-$18 per square foot, Harausz said.

"We're picking up the slack that's just spilling out of the office space in Boston and Cambridge," said Harausz.

Lightbridge provides software, transaction management and consulting services to help telecommunications carriers acquire and retain customers. The company operates other call centers in Waltham and Boulder, Colo. The Lynn call center will be its third.

"The Cyber District is developing very rapidly. We saw a good opportunity," said Gil Isenstein, spokesman for Lightbridge. Lynn City officials are wooing technology companies to the Goldblock Project, several blocks of older buildings in Lynn that landlords are renovating for use as high-tech space, said Harausz.

"The basic infrastructure is here and more is coming," Harausz said.