Bandwidth in communications is like closet space in your home-you can never have enough. And Internet traffic is making the demand for communication capacity grow faster than the wardrobe of a teenager with a no-limit credit card. Bandwidth-hogging megabytes of animated graphics are replacing compact e-mail messages. Data, video and voice signals crowd transmission systems that had ample space just a few years ago. The communications industry needs room to breathe.

That's exactly what a new generation of fiber-optic technology is bringing to networks such as the aptly named Project Oxygen. Neil Tagare, founder of the CTR Group in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., picked that name for the global network because he considered the tremendous bandwidth offered by the new technology to be as vital for telecommunications as oxygen is to life itself. By sending signals at 16 different wavelengths through each of four pairs of optical fibers, Project Oxygen will carry 640 gigabits per second (Gbit/s) across whole oceans. That's the equivalent of 10 million simultaneous telephone conversations-enough for every person in Hungary or Belgium to call the United States at the same time.