Telecommunications Essentials

Optical Networking Drivers

The performance improvements—in speed, cost, and capacity—of fiber have been fast and furious. The number of bits per second that fiber can carry doubles every nine months for every dollar spent on the technology. The number of bits per second (bps) per lambda (λ), or wavelength, doubles every 12 months. The cost of transmitting a bit of information optically drops by 50% every nine months, and fiber prices, on a per-megabits-per-second basis, are falling by 60% each year. In comparison, the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles only every 18 months. Therefore, over a five-year period, optical technology far outpaces silicon chips and data storage.

Optical equipment has helped to drive down the price of moving ...