But there is a third pillar to renewed prosperity: bandwidth last-mile bandwidth (LMB).
To clarify, Netflix is small part of overall Internet traffic but a big part of last-mile traffic.
At the same time, pressure on the last-mile links appears to be abating, says Alan Mauldin of TeleGeography.
Due to what Gilder calls "regulatory sclerosis, " demand for last-mile broadband fiber is going unmet in the United States.
In fact, in the past couple of years there has been substantial investment in last-mile infrastructure around the world.
Last Thursday Bloomberg completely integrated Twitter into its terminals, creating a last-mile connection between companies, social media and Wall Street.
The lack of last-mile bandwidth is holding up the next generation of internet software, which requires streaming audio and high-quality video.
To a very tiny extent, that happens today in that UPS Surepost and FedEx Smartpost use USPS for last-mile package delivery.
All other factors considered--recessionary year, no Napster, grinding paralysis on last-mile--a quadrupling of Net traffic can be seen as a huge upset win.
Indeed, stunning technological developments on the verge of commercialization will transform dsl into the bandwidth of choice, not only for the last-mile-to-the-home but also for small businesses.
Alternatively, rivals may hand over mail to the national operator for final delivery, akin to the last-mile connection that gives new entrants access to existing telecoms infrastructure.
Cash on Delivery seems here to stay, and the problems of that last-mile of delivery, and unreliable third party couriers will take at least a decade to resolve.
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Zhone claims that its equipment, due in the next year, will be the first to handle voice, video and data on a single last-mile network, whatever its physical makeup.
Zhone says that its equipment, due in the next year, will be the first to handle voice, video and data on a single last-mile network, whatever its physical makeup.
In many countries telecoms operators have been converting some of their last-mile connections to high-speed fibre-optic links, though cable networks and telephone wires still account for most last-mile connections.
Britain retains the Royal Mail's monopoly on the last-mile delivery for daily mail volumes under 4, 000 items (Express Dairies got its delivery licence because its volume is above the monopoly threshold).
There is a company building wireless last-mile bandwidth installations.
That will help pry open the last-mile jam, letting future devices provide instant access to the best network and cheaply adapt to new standards that allow signals to carry more data or travel longer distances.
The Stanford university team, which won DARPA's last 132-mile robotic race through the Mojave Desert event in 2005, has outfitted its more chic Volkswagon Passat with eight laser sensors and two of Intel's quad-core blade servers, dwarfing the Cybervan's processing power.
The Stanford university team, which won DARPA's last 132-mile robotic race through the Mojave Desert event in 2005, has outfitted its more chic Volkswagon Passat with eight laser sensors and two of Intel's (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) quad-core blade servers, dwarfing the Cybervan's processing power.
Perhaps most important, digital wireless is prying open the biggest bottleneck in tech--that "last mile" between speed-of-light fiber-optic networks and the zippy insides of your PC.
The canal's navigable sections are currently isolated from each other but boat trips are run on a three-mile section at Loxwood and, from last month, on a mile-long section at Alford, in Surrey.
"It is a beautiful body of water, " said Rondi Davies, an Australian-born science teacher living in Harlem who hopes to complete the last stage of her 120-mile swim Monday.
Government ownership of roadways is rife with problems, to be sure, but the case for government-operated roads is much stronger than that for government-operated last mile fiber connections.
Andy Hood of VeloNews magazine says Armstrong did the most damage to his competitors on the punishing 14-mile last leg of the climb up to the ski resort.
It will be rolling out fibre to the cabinet technology (FTTC) - which provides a fibre connection as far as the familiar green boxes on the corner of streets but still relies on copper wiring for the so-called last mile between the cabinet and the home.
Claire Squires, 30, of North Kilworth, collapsed and died on the final stretch of the 26.2-mile course last April.
Telecom providers believe that millions more Americans would use high-speed broadband Internet connections if only they could solve the so-called "last mile" problem.
The Last Mile is a six-month, twice-weekly program for prisoners to learn entrepreneurship while developing their own startup idea.
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