Last Mile.

The Web and telecom sectors seem to sag a little more every week, but bucking the trend is Torrance-based Broadata Communications Inc., a maker of telecom hardware. The $5-million-in-sales shop recently retained John Morris, investment banker with Gerard Klauer Mattison in Century City, to help hunt down a $15 million equity infusion.

Burt Walker, Broadata chief executive and president, admits that the long-distance segment of the telecom market is seriously overbuilt. Major outfits have laid down optic fiber coast-to-coast and even girdling the globe - so much so that a lot of it lies fallow, or "unlit." Price wars promise to be chronic.

But what is called "the last mile" to actual Web and telecommunications customers is a different matter. Broadata makes hardware - a "black box" which allows users to transmit voice, data, graphics and video on one line.

Broadata sells the boxes to phone giants, which in turn resell them to customers. Also, Broadata sells the boxes to large users, such as Walt Disney Co., or universities. "If you want to move around high-quality images, this box allows you to do that on one line," said Walker.

But Broadata's story lies in a new box, which will allow users to access to national fiber trunk lines, even if their area is served by old-fashioned copper.

Nationwide, many neighborhoods lie beyond metro fiber networks, which often only serve central business or high-rent districts. Broadata has new hardware, called "Starweb," which allows even the copper-handicapped to receive and deliver fat content, says Walker.

The sought-after $15 million in new capital will help launch Starweb, says Walker. In doing so, Walker hopes to elicit a buyout offer from one of the phone companies.

Contributing columnist Benjamin Mark Cole writes about the local investment community for the Los Angels Business Journal. His new book is "The Pied Pipers of Wall Street: How Analysts Sell You Down the River," Published-by Bloomberg Press.