The acceptance of optical fiber into the Offshore Oil Industry has been an ongoing process with initial evaluation and experimentation beginning in the mid 1990's. Prior to that, in the late 1980's fiber cables had been used for topside to topside links between platforms. Historically, subsea communication systems have been based on the applications of telecommunications modem technology imposed on a twisted pair wire cable. These systems have proven to be a reliable means of communication. The weaknesses of these modem communication technologies that have lowered their reliability are cross talk between lines, drop-out due to line noise, resistance of the cable which limits application over long offset distances, and cable capacitance that lowers bandwidth, data rate and multi-channel application. There have been improvements in the copper modem communication reliability that have brought an increase in data rate from 1200 bps to 9600 bps.
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