Intelligent policies out of Washington that force vendors to connect and interoperate (just like our bank ATMs and phones do) and hospitals and physician buyers demanding the same will fuel this revolution.

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One approach allows each vendor to decide how they will interoperate.

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When it is finished in the second half of this year, the specification is expected to deliver data rates of 10Mbps for home phoneline networking and also to be backward-compatible and interoperate with existing HomePNA 1Mbps technology.

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These products create a management layer to help corporate network administrators make diverse network devices interoperate smoothly and reliably.

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When vendors implement their own protocols and selectively interoperate, they push the burden of interoperability to the customer.

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How the European approach will interoperate with other countries' passport controls still needs to be worked out.

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