Ryan Freiwald
MAJ. Ha
CIS 270WX-02
4/10/16
Writing Assignment #3 Draft
In the world of communication, many different types of cables are used in order to pass information from point A to point be. Despite what many people may think, in order to provide internet and phone services, cables are still required. We do not live in a world where internet is provided completely by satellites and radio waves. With this in mind, over the past 30 years, a particular cable developed by the AT&T telephone company has begun to show its dominance in the information world. This cable, known as fiber optical cabal, is revered by many experts as the future of communication that will eventual make every other cable obsolete. This is due to a multitude of reasons that will be discussed in the paper. AT&T is a company, along with others, that has defined a generation and has made communication fast and easy to the point where people now expect communication to be instant. (EDU)
The history of the development of fiber optical cables is similar to the development of most innovation. Years of testing, collaboration between different countries, and experimentation went into its production. After development of a prototype that took a little over a decade, in 1976, the first experimental fiber optical cables were installed in Atlanta Georgia. In this particular instance, over 2000 meters of cable were laid under the street. After the success of this installation and the promise that this cable showed, more locations were used as test sites. Fiber optical cables began to grow in popularity to the point where in 1980, the fiber optic cable went global. (HSE)
Fiber optical cables can be made of two different types of material, plastic optical fibers or glass. The only requirements of the materials is that they have to have the ability to conduct light in a linear path over long distances which is how these cables work. They conduct infrared light along the fibers of the cables. Much like primitive telephone cables used pulses of electricity to pass information, fiber optical cables use infrared light. One advantage of using light is the fact multiple different colors can be used. This means that two different signals can be sent at the same time of the same cable with a low loss ratio. This is just one advantage of many other that will be discussed. (HSE)
More advantages of using fiber optical cables are as follow: The first advantage is that fiber optic cables are very thin. This gives the greater ability to be concealed and to be coiled to pass large amounts of information. One big trend of communication in this day and age is concealability. Phone towers are being disguised as trees and phone/ power lines are beginning to be moved completely underground. The second advantage is that fiber optic cables are more secure than the traditional copper wire. In the information age when privacy is seen by many people as more of an illusion than a reality, the promise of personal information security sometimes seems too good to be true but fiber optical cables offer it. This is not because it is impossible to tap fiber optic cables but because the cost versus benefit ratio makes it almost not worth it. The third advantage of fiber optical cables, which is one of the most important, is its efficiency. Nothing is faster than the speed of light and when you couple light speed with a low loss rate competition starts to disappear. The last advantage, and the most important is its durability. Fiber optical cables have been tried and proven to work in any temperature and weather condition. This reliability is marketable just by itself. (ETH)
With all the advantages it’s pretty easy to discover why fiber optic cables haven’t made all other cables obsolete. Fiber optic cables are expensive to buy and install. Furthermore, if a company wanted to switch over to fiber optic cables, it could takes years to switch all the previously installed technology over. Lastly, completely switching technology is hard on a company because it requires all the workers to relearn their jobs so the training and wait time can be expensive. (ETH)
So what does this mean for the United States? In the future fiber optic cables will not be just a better substitute but a necessity. People are always looking for something new that is faster and reliable and when they discover it with fiber optical cables, copper wires will being to fade away into the history books.
Works Cited