Re: A (potentially) astonishing step change in FO bandwidth.
That's not entirely true. Fibre transmission characteristics do degrade over time, exacerbated by stress - the latter was learnt the hard way by Energis, where the bright idea of putting fibre on the neutral lines at the top of electricity pylons started to fade when the wires waved around in the wind.
Even underground or sub-sea will degrade. I was peripherally involved in a project to put Raman amplifiers on an existing subsea run to extend its life - maybe an extra ten years before it had to be completely replaced. That was on a link that was maybe 25 years old at the time, to give an overall idea of lifespan.
The exact mechanism of degradation may vary, but consider that the fibres rely on very precise control of impurities over a very long distance, and that they have to be encased in materials that may, over time, leach impurities into the fibre.
This technology will mainly be of use in backbone links: it is quite unlikely that the sort of bandwidth available will be needed in last-mile domestic links. And if it ever is, the backbone will need LOTS of investment! Last mile links also will have so much native capacity that a bit of degradation won't really matter, so they may well last a lot longer than backbones.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
