Imagine an urban network unable to supply water to all the shops and homes due to insufficiently long piping. This is very much like the situation we have today in the broadband network. Many thousands of millions of dollars have been invested in building fiber-optic networks to bring higher quality multimedia to domestic computers and professional services, and yet they come up short. In North America, for instance, efforts to reach 9 out of 10 companies with over 100 employees fall a little under a mile short. The promise is there, and it’s great, but it takes a long time to become reality: reduced buffering, quicker access to data libraries, swifter e-commerce, real-time videocasts, the transfer of images in clinical practice, networking between companies to enable job sharing … All of this is yet to get going. It lies buried beneath the paving and the sidewalks of the city.
ANTHONY ACAMPORA