Information Transmission over Fiber Optics

A fiber optic cable provides a pipeline that can carry large amounts of information. The earlier alternatives to Fiber optics included over the air broadcasts and hard-wired copper cables carrying electrons.

Electrical transmission uses copper wires or copper coax cable to carry a modulated electrical signal. This allows the transmission of an unlimited number of private channels; however, each channel can carry only a limited amount of information due to the inherent limiting characteristics of copper cable.

Free space transmission represents how radio signals and over the air TV signals travel. It provides very large bandwidth to pass through as well as long distance capability, but this transmissions scheme cannot offer private channels. Also, the free space spectrum is becoming a costly commodity with access governed by the FCC. It cannot provide the millions of high speed communication channels required by the global information age.  Fiber optic transmission offers high bandwidth and data rates but it does not add to the crowded free space spectrum.

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