Fiber Optic Manufacture Since fiber optic cables provide fast transfer speeds and large bandwidth, they are used for a large part of the Internet backbone. For example, most transatlantic telecommunications cables between the U.S. and Europe are fiber optic. In recent years, fiber optic technology has become increasingly popular for local Internet connections as well. For example, some ISPs now offer "fiber Internet," which provides Internet access via a fiber optic line. Fiber connections can provide homes and businesses with data transfer speeds of 1 Gbps.
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Fiber optic cable is a high-speed data transmission medium. It contains tiny glass or plastic filaments that carry light beams. Digital data is transmitted through the cable via rapid pulses of light. The receiving end of a fiber optic transmission translates the light pulses into binary values, which can be read by a computer.
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Data can be transmitted digitally (the natural form for computer data) rather than analogically. The main disadvantage of fiber optics is that the cables are expensive to install. In addition, they are more fragile than wire and are difficult to splice. Fiber optics is a particularly popular technology for local-area networks. In addition, telephone companies are steadily replacing traditional telephone lines with fiber optic cables. In the future, almost all communications will employ fiber optics