That sad sound you heard was technology at work

摘要

Several years back, Simplex (now Tyco) in Portsmouth changed over to fiber cable from the massive several thousand end telephone cables and still had a healthy two-year backlog of submarine cable. Lo and behold, someone came up with a new repeater which increased the transmission rate thin the fiber by some ungodly factor (meaning I forgot how much) and the two-year backlog turned to two months and Simplex had their first layoffs. As I think back on the fiber troubles, I also remember seeing news stories about Bell Labs and one of the Japanese counter-parts going back and forth to see who could pump more data down a piece of glass fiber. And they kept going higher and higher (and continue to do so). And then there were the technical papers trying to outdo each other with how many thou-sands of fibers that you could possibly stick in a tube. So in retrospect, it is no wonder that most people believe that there is a glut of fiber cable already installed around the world and that the majority of telecom companies (and associated industries) are either in the tank or barely have their nose above the water in the tank. And copper cable has the same problem: Cat 1 to Cat 3 to Cat 5 to 5e to 6 to 7 to 8 to???