The company offers gear designed to help cable and phone companies squeeze more video capacity out of a limited amount of bandwidth as consumers watch video clips on their computers, demand more channels from their cable companies, and even start to watch television on their wireless phones.

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First introduced in the late 1800s to save the strain on horses hauling carts up the city's steep inclines, the 15, 500-pound cable-powered cars grip a continuously moving underground cable with pliers-like gear to travel the streets of San Francisco.

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Its custom-made gear keeps the packets flying at telcos and cable companies and the giant data centers delivering the Web.

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Clickfree's remarkably useful Transformer Cable isn't the only new gear being announced from the outfit today -- far from it, actually.

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This week's Ask Engadget inquiry is from David, who wants to know if you'd prefer a free cable or a cheaper device when you buy pro audio gear.

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Such copper pipe now connects telephones, cable television, computers and all manner of other information processing gear.

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Main.net's gear already serves 10, 000 European homes at speeds of 500 kilobits a second, roughly equal to average cable and digital subscriber line (DSL) speeds, but a tenfold increase over standard dial-up modems.

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