Frontier, the nation's fifth-largest long-distance carrier, was staffed by old-economy workers, the kind who climbed telephone poles in winter to replace wires.

We've been through here repairing electrical connections, replacing wires, plastering and painting--just to keep the place from falling apart completely.

Carefully, she replaced wires, tubing, and optic fibers, checking and rechecking every connection to make sure it was not only secure, but correct.

He added that the complaints had required mostly minor repairs, such as replacing wires and adjusting controls.

The transportation department is also replacing wires from Stamford to New Haven and expects that work to be done between 2008 and 2010.

Because light travels faster than electrons (and has some other advantages), optical fibers have already replaced electric wires in many telephone systems.

That means riders will be experiencing delays daily, while car repair workers struggle to replace burned-out wires and motors.

They worked for over a week to replace broken poles and wires.

"We're literally having to replace wires that lead out of manholes into buildings," he said, "so it's taking some time."

Proximity communication replaces wires by capacitive coupling, promises significant increase in communications speed between chips in an electronic system, among other benefits.