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Fiber Optic facts

While investigating facts about Fiber Optic Cable and Fiber Optic Christmas Tree, I found out little known, but curios details like:

The US government has given $400 billion to ISPs to build a fiber optic network. The ISPs kept the money and never built the network.

how fiber optics work?

Verizon developed a special knife that uses pressurized air to slice through lawns so fiber optic lines can be buried. The tool cuts through grass but does not break sprinkler pipes and gas lines.

What fiber optic cable?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what fiber optics is used for. Here are 50 of the best facts about Fiber Optic Internet and Fiber Optic Tree I managed to collect.

what's fiber optic internet?

  1. Google wraps its undersea fiber optic cables in Kevlar to protect them from shark bites.

  2. Concrete can be made translucent by incorporating optical fibers in merely 4% of its volume. The material feels and behaves just like concrete, but allows light to pass through.

  3. Plants of the Fenestraria genus produce optical fibers made from crystalline oxalic acid to transmit light to subterranean photosynthetic sites.

  4. In 2002, a widely-watched live TV special followed a robot as it crawled through a 5" opening in the Great Pyramid of Giza, punched a hole in a door at the end of the passage, and inserted a fiber optic camera into the hole. Behind the door was nothing but a small empty space.

  5. Star Destroyer models were illuminated by 100,000 hand wired strands of fiber optics in the original Star Wars trilogy. For the Super Star Destroyer, they switched to brass etching by hand to increase the number to 250,000.

  6. Deep-sea fiber optic cables are now buried under the seabed, because the electricity running through them used to attract sharks who would bite into them - electrocuting the shark and destroying the cable

  7. Squirrels cause seventeen percent of fiber optic cable cuts

  8. Companies that are mounting laser beams on top of buildings to deliver financial trading data tiny bits faster than fiber optic. This allows high speed stock trading algorithms to capitalize on info known before anyone else.

  9. In 2009 Jim Barksdale completed a nearly straight 300 million dollar fiber-optic link between Chicago and NYC. By shaving 3ms off the previously fastest connection, Barksdale can charge 8 to 10 times the going rate because any trading algorithm not operating on his network is at a disadvantage.

  10. In 2013 some trading firms laid a new transatlantic fiber-optic cable stretching 3,000 miles and costing 300 million USD between London and New York. As a result, their stock trading orders are executed 5.2 milliseconds faster.

fiber optic facts
What fiber optic internet is available in my area?

Why fiber optic internet is better?

You can easily fact check why fiber optics by examining the linked well-known sources.

Multiple city citizens have been paying thousands in taxes to upgrade to fiber optics that was never delivered (Since as early as 1992!!)

Fiber-optic internet cables on the sea floor has to be wrapped in kevlar to protect them from shark bites - source

Over 99% of international communication is delivered by undersea fiber-optic cables that spread between each continent.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the photophone, a precursor to fiber-optics. He believed it to be his most important invention. - source

When fiber optics invented?

When fiber optics became important, germanium was used in that field.

How fiber optic cable works?

Now, 85% of the world consumption of germanium is in fiber optics.

A Georgian woman sent almost all of Armenia offline for about 12 hours by damaging an international fiber-optic backbone cable with a shovel while scavenging for scrap metal.

Bell Labs achieved a 100 Petabit per second data transfer using fiber optics. Thats 100 million Gigabits per second.

optical fibers cost about $1 million per kilogram to produce.

Fiber Optic cables transmit light in IR spectrum, not in visible light.

When was fiber optic cable invented?

Americans already paid $200B for fiber optic internet in the 90s. The internet companies just stole the money and never delivered.

Ants can chew through fiber optic cable, knocking out Internet and phone service to homes. The ants are attracted by a jelly-like substance used in the cable casing.

Counties like Owens Valley are planning to build Fiber Optics directly into their infrastructure. High speed broadband will be brought to all the homes and businesses in the area without needing a service carrier/provider.

In 2007, off the coast of Vietnam, pirates cut and stole an 11km section of submarine fiber optic cable and sold the 100 tons of material as scrap.

In 1985 AT&T discovered that sharks would attack underwater fiber optic cables because they were attracted to the electromagnetic radiation they emitted.

How fiber optic cable is made?

Telia Carrier (former TeliaSonera) is an international carrier that owns and manages 43,000 km of fiber optic cable linking Russia, the Baltics, the rest of EU & the U.S. If these lines would be be disrupted, it may compromise global comm.

The world's first Terabit optical transmission was completed in November 2011 and it was based on 500Gbit/s super-channels. The demonstration was performed on 1105 km of optical fiber between LA and San Jose, CA

In January 2006, TV contractors dug up a fiber optic cable by accident, which turned off long-distance service for millions of Sprint users in the blink of an eye.

There are actually pipes designed to carry light(RF/Microwave range, not using a fiber optic cable).

Fiber optics would be spared from an EMP

Utah (of all places) has a local fiber optic ISP that is dedicated to preserving an open internet

Securities traders use microwave communication instead of fiber optics because fiber optics is 30-40% slower.

The total bandwidth of Cuba is 209 Mbit/s upstream and 379 Mbit/s downstream. To put that in context: someone with Google Fiber has a higher capacity link than the entire nation of Cuba because there are no fiber optic cables connecting the island to the Internet.

US taxpayers have been charged $400 billion by the major telco's for a fiber optic network that was never built

The internet is connected via fiber-optic cables which run under the ocean

Submarine deep sea optical fiber cables are only 17 millimeters wide and much thinner than the shallow sea (less than 1km deep) ones because those are buried in the sea bed

U.S. citizens have paid $400 billion to telecommunications companies for a fiber optic system that was never delivered.

Sharks are literally attacking the internet by chewing through undersea fiber optic cables.

The IEX uses 38 miles of fiber optic cable to prevent high frequency trading from having an unfair advantage over individuals.

LEBs- Cyberpunk Wearable Fiber Optic Implant Transillumination

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Fiber Optic. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Fiber Optic so important!

Editor Veselin Nedev Editor