The last-mile. Often, it's just a few hundred feet. It's the portion of the communications network that stretches from the building to the metro loop of the carrier's high-speed network. In most areas, the last-mile is made up of legacy copper or coaxial wiring left over from the days of Alexander Graham Bell. Slow and unable to scale to high bandwidth needs, copper wasn't designed to handle high-speed voice, data and Internet connections - much less transmit even a fraction of the data that most mid-sized businesses send and receive in a typical day.

A matter of economics.

With carriers building end-to-end digital networks spanning oceans and time zones, you might think the out-dated copper would have been replaced by now. But the greatest obstacle has always been economies of scale: no carrier would move to replace the copper network in one fell swoop. Why not? First, it requires a huge capital outlay. Second, it requires securing permits for trenching and construction from a city that isn't likely to welcome destruction of their streets. Third, it's a formidable engineering challenge to lay cable in an asphalt and concrete jungle.

So, rather than replace all of the existing copper, carriers have been deploying interim solutions to deliver broadband services to urban customers. Solutions such as fixed wireless and DSL. Or, trenching to lay point-to-point fiber cable to select "A" buildings and areas - often for the specific and sole use of a single customer in a building. Now, thanks to CityNet, carriers, cities, enterprises and government agencies everywhere have a real last-mile solution.