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Just last week, a report by Swiss bank UBS showed how the linked development of energy storage, solar power and electric vehicles is changing the economics of power generation. UBS predicts that by 2020, a return on investment for an unsubsidized purchase of an electric vehicle, coupled with a rooftop solar installation and battery storage, will drop to just six years in much of Europe. Smart distribution networks would precisely manage the usage and allocation of electricity, allowing for an electric car to be charged at night, for the sun to power a house during daylight hours and for improved batteries to store power for other residential uses. While such news might not be met with cheers in the offices of national grid operators, it shows just how the quest for "The Holy Grail of Energy Storage" is doomed to fail. 

Bell Labs is back, recently setting a new world record of 10 gigabit per second over existing copper wires. Why is this important? Because it solves the fiber-to-residence problem. Fiber cables for high-speed Internet services are being laid all throughout the country and world, but at a relatively slow rate due to the "curb-to-residence" problem. Many home owners are reluctant to let their lawns be dug up to lay fiber from the curb to the house, and many Internet providers are reluctant to incur the cost. Now Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs (Murray Hill, New Jersey) has a invented a solution -- a method of running 1-to-10 gigabit per second broadband signals from the curb to the residence using the existing copper telephone lines already there.