June 2001
Building a Better Backbone
Surging Internet growth has put pressure on telecom networks to keep up. Their most advanced R&D is going toward expanding the capacity of the long-haul cables that cross continent
By Neil Savage
On a giant screen at the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York, video images flash by-news footage of a war, an inauguration, a spaceshot, a game show-along with real-time projections of museumgoers staring up in wonder. The source of all these images? A strand of glass, thinner than a human hair, yet wide enough to carry more information than three million copper wires, the technology it replaced. Cor-ning is justified in showing off its invention: optical-fiber technology ranks as one of the technological miracles of the 20th century.
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