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Yeah the phone companies laid those thick 144-strand bundles before wave division multiplexing. They figured the only way to get more bandwidth was more fibers

Yeah the phone companies laid those thick 144-strand bundles before wave division multiplexing. They figured the only way to get more bandwidth was more fibers, right? WDM came along and caught them with their pants down; now all of a sudden you could just attach different devices to the ends of the fiber and get 16x the bandwidth. No backhoes needed. Then CWDM let you split and combine channels in locations without a reliable power supply -- no electronics, just prisms! Unfortunately their response -- those who weren't killed off -- was to get the antitrust regulators to look the other way (i'm sure the "national security" card was played) while they bought each other up and carved countries into a checkerboard of regional monopolies. But hey, if you squint at it from far enough away you can see two colors, so that's not a monopoly, right?

jacquesm 3y ago
In the meantime though we've started using a substantial fraction of those thick fiber bundles and dark fiber is getting harder and harder to find. Barring another revolution in technology I suspect that at some point we'll be laying even more of those big bundles, or even bigger ones.
- KirillPanov 3y ago
  > dark fiber is getting harder and harder to find Only because all of it along any given route now tends to be owned by a single entity. And that entity can simply say "not for sale". If the market were healthy dark fiber prices would skyrocket instead of availability plummeting.
liotier 3y ago
WDM guy here. Sure, 80 channels are space for lots of 400 Gb/s circuits... But we still fill cables and keep laying more. Though yes, the big 1288 fibers cables aren't common. Also, lambdas don't terminate at every node - so sparse network topology implies that filling all channels on a single link is a merely theoretical situation.
rasz 3y ago
>before wave division multiplexing. ... WDM came along Would that be Ciena in 1996?
senttoschool 3y ago
>Yeah the phone companies laid those thick 144-strand bundles before wave division multiplexing. They figured the only way to get more bandwidth was more fibers, right? I don't know anything about fiber tech but can't they just apply the newer techniques to the already laid out 144 strand bundles?

jacquesm 3y ago

In the meantime though we've started using a substantial fraction of those thick fiber bundles and dark fiber is getting harder and harder to find. Barring another revolution in technology I suspect that at some point we'll be laying even more of those big bundles, or even bigger ones.

KirillPanov 3y ago
> dark fiber is getting harder and harder to find Only because all of it along any given route now tends to be owned by a single entity. And that entity can simply say "not for sale". If the market were healthy dark fiber prices would skyrocket instead of availability plummeting.

liotier 3y ago

WDM guy here. Sure, 80 channels are space for lots of 400 Gb/s circuits... But we still fill cables and keep laying more. Though yes, the big 1288 fibers cables aren't common. Also, lambdas don't terminate at every node - so sparse network topology implies that filling all channels on a single link is a merely theoretical situation.

rasz 3y ago

>before wave division multiplexing. ... WDM came along Would that be Ciena in 1996?

senttoschool 3y ago

>Yeah the phone companies laid those thick 144-strand bundles before wave division multiplexing. They figured the only way to get more bandwidth was more fibers, right? I don't know anything about fiber tech but can't they just apply the newer techniques to the already laid out 144 strand bundles?