Game Changing Advancements in Fiber Optic Cable Technology
We can’t just have enough data, we want more and more. Fiber optics technology has never been more important as it is now because of the insatiable need for data in the world today.
Think about it – absolutely everything you do online, whether you make calls on Skype, use video conferencing, surf the internet, stream YouTube videos, or for that matter anything else, are about data. Without fiber optics there is no way to move the data around so quickly, and that would bring the entire communications system crashing down.
The rise in the use of fiber optics is really about the advances in physics. There have been impressive developments in recent years as researchers have worked to achieve extraordinary data transfer speeds of 255 TBPS. This is so fast that the technology makes it possible to carry all of the world’s data on just one fiber cable.
That’s impressive! What’s more impressive is that the researchers have used a multi-core glass fiber for transporting such an incredible amount of data at such a high speed – and not a single-core fiber as used by most companies around the world.
Multi-core fiber cables are still a developing technology. But most telecom and internet companies have been planning to upgrade their lines with cables that carry data up to a speed of 400 GBPS. Currently, most fiber optic cables are capable of carrying data at a speed of 10 GBPS. So you can expect a number of new upgrades to come through over the next few years.
Security, design and reliability mean a bright future for fiber infrastructure
From the security perspective, fiber optic cables are far better than the copper wires that were used in the past. Fiber cables make use of light for the transmission and are hack proof for the most part. It is very hard to interfere with them apart from physically breaking the cables. Any data breach is immediately identified.
From the design perspective, the fiber optic cables are much thinner and lighter compared to copper cables. You won’t find it hard to wrap them up in a protective coating. They are also much easier to suspend from poles, if you prefer that to burying them in the ground. They carry far more data as well.
From the perspective of reliability, you simply cannot go wrong with fiber optic cables. They are protected from most types of threats interferences, whether it is radio-frequency interference, electrometric interference, or impedance/cross-talk. They are also not as vulnerable to changes in temperature as copper wires.
This shows that the fiber optic technology is one for the future, and is already changing the way we conduct business, play online games, access or report news and use the internet. Eventually, the hope is for all communications to become instantaneous, but this is easier said than done.
Certainly, recent innovations in the United States and Netherlands related to fiber optic technology point to a bright future. We could very well have data transmission speeds of 400 GBPS in the near future, and that could transform a lot of things about the way we live and work.