High speed laser communication

The Dec 2006 scientific american discusses how supercontinuum lasers could drive communication speeds to 1 pbit/s or faster

UK report on global high speed communication plans. Japan has 2.5 gbps to the home in the works.

End to end IP Communication speed records started 2006 at about 8 Gbps.

The latest transmission record is 100 gigabit ethernet over 4000 km of fiber by Infinera. Unlike Infinera’s demonstration, NTT’s 14 tbit/s transmission was accomplished over a single 100-mile-long fiber optic line. NTT’s backbone consists primarily of 1Tbps fiber; most US IP backbones consist of multiple 10Gbps links.

100 tbit/s routers planned since 2004

14 terabits per second over a single optical fiber is the record so far in 2006.

Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation (Pink Sheets:VTSS) on oct 31, 2006 unveiled the world’s highest capacity semiconductor device with breakthrough 1.5 Terabit per second (Tbps) switching capacity and advanced Signal Integrity technology, laying the groundwork for new broadband services such as HDTV, Video-on-Demand and Fiber-to-the Home (FTTH).

Currently in the USA the fastest communication services are:
Verizon Communications currently offers three tiers in its Fios service: 5Mbps (megabits per second) downstream/2Mbps upstream for $34.95 per month; 15Mbps/2Mbps for $44.95; and 30 Mbps/5mbps for $179.95. It is available to a total of 6 million premises by year-end 2006 (18% of the Verizon network of 33 million), with an additional 3 million a year planned through 2010.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, doubled download speeds of its fastest broadband service in four cities to 16Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads at a cost of $52.95 per month.

Cablevision, which also competes with Verizon, offers consumers two tiers of service: 15Mbps/1Mbps for $49.95 or 30Mbps/2Mbps for $64.95. The cable television operations serve more than 3 million households in the New York metropolitan area.

Fast wireless communication is coming via wimax and some new cellphone standards. The wireless record demo is about 2.5 gbps.