Via Fred Pilot at Eldo Telecom, Geoff Daily makes the argument that "all broadband is fiber." Geoff has it exactly right. Just yesterday, I met with a community leader who asked, appropriately, "What if we spend all this money on fiber and wireless turns out to be cheaper and better?"
Daily reminds us that all wireless networks eventually dump their traffic onto fiber networks in order to work properly. If wireless were the solution, the backhaul for wireless networks would be wireless, not fiber. And we can take that even further, as the "little broadband" solutions of DSL and cable modem would not work at all if they did not aggregate their traffic onto fiber cables.
Fiber is the future of economic development in America's communities. Economic developers and community leaders that ignore the importance of affordable, high performance broadband availability are putting their community's economic future at great risk.