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To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (14568)	8/15/1999 4:27:00 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Frank - I enjoyed your comments about "no way to know what was coming with the tide" because I had just read an article on raging bull that summarizes the development of fiber optic networks and DWDM. Copied from Raging Bull NT thread ragingbull.com Bandwidth is exploding because of the proliferation of new high-speed laser-based networks, turning the global telecom industry on its head. New players are fuelling competition, giving businesses and consumers more choice. Yet bandwidth is expected to grow exponentially for many years still, as researchers push fibre-optic laser technology even further. And that means carriers and customers alike will be able to move even more information faster as costs spiral further downward. Fibre-optic cable makers are currently producing enough fibre to circle the Earth three times a day -- or more than 1,000 times a year, says Alastair Glass, head of photonics research at Lucent's Bell Labs. "It's hard to imagine what people want to do with that much fibre, but it seems to be like computer memory and microprocessors. When capacity increases, people use it up." The DWDM supply-and-demand spiral has been a boon for consumers, driving down the price of bandwidth dramatically. Nortel's Mr. Roth estimates the cost has fallen 99 per cent in the past decade. But Internet use continues to accelerate and the craving for capacity is still on the rise. Surfers ride fibre wave By far the greatest impact of fibre-optic advances has been to fuel the breathtaking growth of the Internet and its multimedia interface -- the World Wide Web. "The Internet could not be the phenomenon it has become without the increased capacity and cheaper costs brought about by new laser systems," says Mr. Roth. Bandwidth is like the closets in your house, says Donna Cunningham, spokeswoman for Bell Labs -- the research arm of Lucent Technologies Inc. of Murray Hill, N.J. "No matter how much room you have, you always need more."