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In 1827, railroad workers began crisscrossing the American landscape with wood and iron--enough railway to circle the globe five times. Steam locomotives chugged along these tracks at a then impressive 10 mph. Some of the tracks still exist today. But right beside them--and alongside highways, oil pipelines, and every other kind of conduit--gloved and hard-hatted construction crews from such titans as Williams Communications Group (above) are laying thousands of miles of wispy optical fiber. It's all cocooned in colored plastic, to safeguard the phone calls and Internet traffic hurtling along at speeds up to 40 billion bits per second. All aboard!
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