Anyone looking for the next big thing in Silicon Valley should stop here at Layne Holt's garage. Mr. Holt and his business partner, John Furrier, both software engineers, have started a company with a shoestring budget and an ambitious target: the cable and phone companies that currently hold a near-monopoly on high-speed access for the "last mile" between the Internet and the home. ... Although he has partially broken with the Wi-Fi standard, he argues he is doing just what the unlicensed radio spectrum was originally set aside to encourage. John Markoff reports on new developments in the emerging business for large-scale WiFi-based Internet access. The developers have paired 802.11b with a software-defined radio, which Markoff (perhaps mistakenly) refers to as a "software-designed radio". 2 Tinkerers Say They've Found a Cheap Way to Broadband | 
