FIBRE OPTICS

Telegraph and telephone communication networks have relied on copper wires for almost 200 years. That is changing rapidly with the rolling out of fibre optic cables. Glass fibres can transmit data at an incredible rate. A single fibre with the thickness of a hair can carry up to 130,000 voice channnels, or send the contents of 1,000 books  in one second. Most houses still have copper wires up to a cabinet in the street for their telephone and/or internet connection. The connection between that cabinet and the telephone exchange is now predominantly by fibre optic cable (FTTC). This limits the bandwidth typically to 50Mb/s. Up to 1Gb/s is achievable with Fibre To The Premise (FTTP).

I bought a small demo kit (Elenco FO-30K) that transfers data via a short fibre optic cable.