fiber optic

Voices

Fiber-Optic Networks Regain Some Glow

Shayndi Raice, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on December 29, 2010 at 5:00 am PT

After the telecom bubble burst a decade ago, fiber was a dirty word. Now, the fiber-optic network business is enjoying a resurgence, particularly for metro fiber, the high-capacity lines that connect a city’s office buildings, data centers and cellular towers to the Internet.

Intel Announces Frickin’ Chips With Frickin’ Laser Beams

John Paczkowski in News on July 27, 2010 at 12:39 pm PT

Intel’s Light Peak high-speed optical cable technology hasn’t even arrived at market yet and already the company has developed a successor that transmits data five times as fast. Dubbed Silicon Photonics Link, it uses chips with integrated hybrid silicon lasers to transfer data over a fiber-optic cable at speeds of 50 gigabits per second. That’s fast enough to download a high definition movie or 100 hours of music in a single second.

With HSPA+ Network Upgrade, AT&T Buys Time for LTE

John Paczkowski in News on May 18, 2010 at 9:57 am PT

Convinced that long-term-evolution, or LTE, wireless broadband’s path to maturity might be quite a bit longer than some of its rivals claim, AT&T is significantly expanding its HSPA+ network upgrade. The carrier is throwing about $10 million at the effort, which it says will double real-world download speeds from 7Mbps to up to 14Mbps–theoretically, anyway.

Oh, Speaking of Broadband–What the Hell Is It?

John Paczkowski in News on August 21, 2009 at 10:49 am PT

Before the Federal Communications Commission begins doling out the $7.4 billion in federal grants up for grabs through national broadband stimulus programs, the agency must answer an important question: What is broadband? And so, in a public notice issued today, the Commission is requesting “tailored” public comment on what the definition of broadband should be.