Increasing the efficiency of semi-conductor lasers has huge ramifications as output powers increase. In the cable industry, you can put >110 channels of analog

Increasing the efficiency of semi-conductor lasers has huge ramifications as output powers increase. In the cable industry, you can put >110 channels of analog video across a fiber optic link, but the laser has to be cooled via a peltier device since the point heat at the die and cavity is so intense. It will be interesting to see whether we can also improve the modulation index with this type of device (for wideband communications like CATV, it's limited by the linearity of the device).