The future of networking is in access

I read this article about a Cisco Engineer commuting 186 miles one way from Mariposa to San Jose to work, 5 days a week. This guy won the prize for America's longest work commute and earned a prize money of $10,000 besides other things. I am amazed that there is a competition of this kind. And more amazed that the winner is an employee of a company whose mission states that the "Internet will change the way we work, live, play, and learn".

The key to achieve this is high-speed broadband access, and I would like Cisco and competing companies to invest more money in this. Yes, the Internet is great, it has revolutionized and shrunk the world, communications have become so cheap, but the ultimate test is delivering unprecedented and cheap bandwidth to all users. So that we may communicate in better and more media-rich ways, and distances can be further bridged, and this Cisco Engineer can work from his ranch in Mariposa. Think of how much energy we all could save if we could reduce the work commute, and allow everyone to work from the comfortable environs of home.

So my hope for 2007 is that high-speed broadband access technologies like EPON can start off in the United States. Korea and Japan have leapfrogged ahead in this technology, countries in Europe have also taken the same up.