Fiber-optic communication

Fiber-optic communication is a form of optical communication for transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of infrared or visible light through an optical fiber. The light is a form of carrier wave that is modulated to carry information. Fiber is preferred over electrical cabling when high bandwidth, long distance, or immunity to electromagnetic interference is required. This type of communication can transmit voice, video, and telemetry through local area networks or across long distances.

Optical fiber is used by many telecommunications companies to transmit telephone signals, internet communication, and cable television signals. Researchers at Bell Labs have reached a record bandwidth–distance product of over 100 petabit × kilometers per second using fiber-optic communication.^{[better source needed]}

First developed in the 1970s, fiber-optics have revolutionized the telecommunications industry and have played a major role in the advent of the Information Age. Because of its advantages over electrical transmission, optical fibers have largely replaced copper wire communications in backbone networks in the developed world.

The process of communicating using fiber optics involves the following basic steps:

Optical fiber is used by telecommunications companies to transmit telephone signals, Internet communication and cable television signals. It is also used in other industries, including medical, defense, government, industrial and commercial. In addition to serving the purposes of telecommunications, it is used as light guides, for imaging tools, lasers, hydrophones for seismic waves, SONAR, and as sensors to measure pressure and temperature.

Due to lower attenuation and interference, optical fiber has advantages over copper wire in long-distance, high-bandwidth applications. However, infrastructure development within cities is relatively difficult and time-consuming, and fiber-optic systems can be complex and expensive to install and operate. Due to these difficulties, early fiber-optic communication systems were primarily installed in long-distance applications, where they can be used to their full transmission capacity, offsetting the increased cost. The prices of fiber-optic communications have dropped considerably since 2000.

The price for rolling out fiber to homes has currently become more cost-effective than that of rolling out a copper-based network. Prices have dropped to $850 per subscriber in the US and lower in countries like The Netherlands, where digging costs are low and housing density is high.^{[citation needed]}

Since 1990, when optical-amplification systems became commercially available, the telecommunications industry has laid a vast network of intercity and transoceanic fiber communication lines. By 2002, an intercontinental network of 250,000 km of submarine communications cable with a capacity of 2.56 Tb/s was completed, and although specific network capacities are privileged information, telecommunications investment reports indicate that network capacity has increased dramatically since 2004. As of 2020, over 5 billion kilometers of fiber-optic cable has been deployed around the globe.