In the so-called backbone of the telecommunications system, the fat pipes that pour data across continents, the name of the game is raw speed (see "Building a Better Backbone,"). But the data racing through the telecom backbone can't fulfill its mission until it is shuttled through the "metropolitan loop," a complex network of cables and switches that delivers those bits to businesses, factories, schools and homes. It's there that the information gusher narrows to a relative trickle, because the metro loop is every bit as tangled as downtown rush-hour traffic. If the broadband revolution is ever to be a reality, the metropolitan bottleneck must be broken.

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