Akademik

n.

The portion of the telephone or cable system that is wired directly to consumers' homes.

"For decades, The Last Mile has been a sedate place in which to do business, a pokey stroll in the park in terms of corporate competition. The telephone and cable giants have faced few, if any, threats to their dominant market shares.

But that's about to change, thanks to impending widespread introduction of high-speed Internet access, known generally within the telecom industry as 'broadband technology.'

Within the next six months, the race to offer broadband will become the most hotly contested business battle of 1999. The Last Mile, in other words, is about to become the telecom equivalent of the Daytona 500."

— Joe Kilsheimer, "High-Speed Internet Access Sparks Race Along the Last Mile," The Orlando Sentinel