As I understand it, it's not really switching at all. Different signals are sent simultaneously down the same fibre at slightly different wavelengths. This dev

As I understand it, it's not really switching at all. Different signals are sent simultaneously down the same fibre at slightly different wavelengths. This device splits the signal into its individual components. This is the same as what's already done, except currently the splitting is done electronically -- here, it's all done in optics, which makes it a lot faster.