There is a lot of hand-wringing going on about last-mile communications and how the U.S. is falling behind. Case in point, an article in EE Times comparing U.S. access to that in Japan and a few other relatively small countries. The article details the 100 Mbps technologies being rolled out in Japan and South Korea and beats the drum that the U.S. is falling behind. There is a grain of truth to the argument, but I believe the next real advance will be wireless access rather than wired. WiMAX will neatly sidestep the massive logistics involved in digging up the streets yet again to wire the last mile to the home and business. Incremental improvements can then be made by upgrading the transmitters and receivers without having to string atoms in between them. Yes, we will fall behind a bit while making this generational leap, but the result will be mobile access and a much more robust infrastructure.

Larry Mittag