Researchers are concerned about the capacity of the Internet. Fiber optic cables “are hitting their physical limits.” Alcatel-Lucent (which was just bought by Nokia for $16.6 billion) says we could reach our limit of “about 100 terabits per second, in five years.” Adding more cables sounds like a conventional solution but it’s not always practical.
Engadget reports: “One technique would ramp up the power in fiber and use calculations to reconstruct a usable signal on the other end, while another would involve fibers with multiple cores that offer much more bandwidth in a similar space. The challenge is putting these theories into practice before it’s too late.”
