One of the fastest ways you can connect to the Internet is via cable as in fibre optic. Now the Koreans claim that they have made it even faster.

To set the scene it is important to understand something about cable. Know that only 16 users can connect to a single fibre optic line. Not sure why just is Okay.

Now the Korea Times is reporting that the state-backed Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) has developed “technology”:

“…we have created technology taking advantage of various length frames of optical fiber, increasing the number 32 fold to 512 users per cable”

This would give end users access to 1Gbps Internet connections. Why is this significant?

For a service to be commercially viable you need to have lots of users to pay for the bandwidth and the cost of the capital equipment. Given economies of scale the more users the less it costs per user. Although here in Australia I think they keep it rather than pass it onto users. So this opens the possibilities for commercial viability of ultra broadband connections, in Korea anyway.

I love this bit:

“The speed is also roughly 100 times faster than the current norm of the wired Internet _ around 10 megabits per second.”

Not sure who’s standard that is but is certainly not mine! But if that is the possibility then count me in.

[Source: The Korea Times]

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 17th, 2006 at 11:44 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.