High-speed Internet access miles away.

Byline: ERIC PETERSON

Fiber-optic cable has been strewn underground to connect every major city in the country, but it has by and large yet to be deployed to customers for a myriad of political and financial reasons.

The last mile - the gap between these networks and the legions of yet-to-be-connected residential and small business customers - has been an excruciating one for the high-speed access industry.

However, as one observer pointed out to me, part of the problem is the fact that the high-speed providers term it "the last mile problem" and