The non-technobabble version...
...we shined a fucking big torch down a long bit of clear plastic for a fiver.
A couple of Australian optics labs have joined up with vendor Finisar to demonstrate an energy-efficient optical system transmitting 10 Tbps over 850 km. On its own, 10 Tbps isn't anything to crow about: terabit systems are, after all, routine in the long-haul market. However, doing it on one fibre and cutting down the energy …
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“the fourier transform, the parallel-serial conversion, cyclic prefix insertion – we do all this in optics”
Okay, the light fiber transmission is impressive, but the final paragraph is the real news. Operations that were formerly done in electrons were done with optical (and off-the-shelf) equipment.
I'm looking forward to what else will be replaced by optical computing (caveat: link to Wikipedia article with lots of "citation needed" sentences)