Word: opticality
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Bandwidth, the capacity of a fiber-optic line to transmit data from one place to another, was considered to be a commodity for which demand was virtually limitless. But as investors in U.S.-based telecommunications company Global Crossing have learned, "endless demand" turned out to be another New Economy nostrum. Anticipating a data tsunami that never came, Global Crossing built a $10 billion, 160,000-km fiber-optic network spanning two oceans and four continents. Last week, the New York Stock Exchange-listed company filed for U.S. bankruptcy court protection in order to restructure its $12.3 billion debt...
Start with what got us here. Businesses overspent to build things like PCs, Internet switches and routers, as well as speedy fiber-optic lines. That spending helped fuel the boom. But once corporate tech budgets tightened, tech stocks plummeted, and so did spending among consumers who held those stocks. Suddenly, those consumers felt much poorer. Typically, cycles work the other way. Robust consumer spending at the height of a boom induces businesses to build more plants at just the wrong moment--when the Federal Reserve is ready to dampen the whole party with higher interest rates to root out inflation...
BRIGHT LIGHTS Dreading yet another year of hauling out the Christmas lights and replacing all the dead bulbs? New Forever Bright lights by Fiber Optic Designs are made of shatter-resistant light-emitting diodes that the company claims will last up to 20 years and cut energy costs up to 85%, compared with regular incandescent Christmas bulbs. Available in red, yellow and green and selling for about $10 for a string of 100, they might rekindle your holiday spirit...
Most companies happily depend on underground fiber-optic lines for the high-speed transmission of voluminous data. So providers of wireless technologies have had a hard time gaining market share. But the World Trade Center tragedy has unexpectedly given them a chance to show off their wares. Because the fiber-optic lines in lower Manhattan were damaged, Merrill Lynch turned to Seattle-based Terabeam, which provides laser transmitters (like the one below) that connect individual offices to the data network. The devices, trained on each other through windows, can send a gigabit of information per second--600 times faster than...
...viewed with suspicion by the often insular business and government elites of the Caribbean Basin. It was just one more way, they grumbled, to get trampled by the global economy. But bold investors are finding opportunity in that angst. This year, more than 5,000 miles of undersea fiber-optic cable is being laid from Miami to the Yucatan to the Bahamas, wiring 15 countries and islands. The $450 million venture is led by a firm based in Miami and Bermuda, aptly called New World Network. "It makes sense for us precisely because the Caribbean is so underserved," says...