Optical Communications - What's New and What Isn't

Optical communication appears to be emerging from the primitive age of its infancy. The kinds of components we routinely associate with radio communications, such as amplifiers, tunable sources, and tunable filters, have the glimmer of impending availability. So the steady exponential increase of bit rate with time continues in inevitable fashion, while designers dream of the flexible distribution systems that the new components will offer. But this rate of progress in the communications infrastructure seems incommensurate with the much smaller growth in the need for new services. Will optical communications foster these new services? How and when will the optical bandwidth reach the end user? Although there are no accepted answers to these important questions, they are well worth discussing.