Fiber Optic Speed Without the Fiber

from the wow dept

It was a big surprise when Dan Hesse (President of AT&T Wireless – and a guy who I once accidentally insulted to his face) left his job at AT&T to go to TeraBeam last week, but as more details come out about their product it sounds pretty cool. They just announced that they’re creating high speed networking technology, that will carry fiber-optic quality bandwidth, without the fiber. So, it’s going to transmit via light. I’m going to remain skeptical until I see it, but if they can do what they say, that’s pretty impressive. Transmitting by light would seem to cause all sorts of problems, since (in my very weak understanding of these things) I would think you’d need to have a clear line-of-sight from one transmission point to the next. I have trouble seeing that as a robust system. I hope they have a good solution, though.


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Comments on “Fiber Optic Speed Without the Fiber”

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Mr.White (user link) says:

LIGHT SPEED [warp transmission]

THIS IS THE WAY TO GO…
I came up with idea …..few weeks ago. [did not wear my alimunium foil hat]….
But….anyways…., yes, line of sight is OKAY!! That is fine, think of this use. Take an entire Quake LAN party….setup w/o wires…wow, fast. Outdoor use? Share a T1 with a ‘LAN’ with your neighbors. THAT would be cool. Take to wireless world….chat with football stadium people ….300 yards away. ….just a thought. You can beam video/mp3 ….that might be cool. Like from a stage…’beam’ it out….and get updates..just a wide spectrum…..I have a few ideas….but, I am wearing my hat.

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