When it comes to bandwidth, there is broad consensus: “Fiber is king.”
Often associated with connection speed, bandwidth actually refers to the capacity to transmit data at a given moment in time—something that fiber optics guarantee like no other transmission medium available in communications networks.
Browsing at the speed of light!
When it comes to bandwidth, there is broad consensus: “Fiber is king.”
Often associated with connection speed, bandwidth actually refers to the capacity to transmit data at a given moment in time—something that fiber optics guarantee like no other transmission medium available in communications networks.
Using an analogy, the concept of bandwidth can be compared to the capacity of a water pipe or a highway. A pipe with a larger diameter can carry more water at a given moment than a narrower one, just as a highway with more lanes can accommodate more vehicles than one with fewer lanes. In telecommunications transmission media, fiber optics are the medium with the highest capacity, meaning the greatest bandwidth.
Another analogy would be a supermarket. A supermarket with more checkout counters can serve more customers at the same time than one with fewer counters. Likewise, in telecommunications networks, fiber optics are the transmission medium that offers the highest capacity—allowing for greater bandwidth.
Fiber optics provide an almost “unlimited” bandwidth transmission capacity, to the point where the current performance of communications networks is no longer limited by the fiber itself, but rather by the electronic components and information systems that make up network infrastructures. Even so, technology continues to evolve daily, and the ultimate limits remain unknown.
Returning to the analogies, it is easy to understand why water reaches homes through narrower pipes than those used in main distribution systems—just as it is logical that an aggregation network has greater bandwidth capacity than the access network to a residence. In this sense, even though terabit-per-second transmission is not yet common at the residential level, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connections offering speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second are already widespread, and 10 Gigabits per second will be part of the near future.
With fiber optics, symmetric connections—where download and upload speeds are equivalent—will also become a reality. This is a major advantage, particularly in SaaS and cloud environments, where services require symmetric bandwidth, as well as in videoconferencing, where uninterrupted transmission is essential. All of this is made possible exclusively by fiber-optic networks.
Thanks to optical transmission—signals converted into light—fiber optics have revolutionized data transmission speed by reducing latency. Latency refers to the delay information experiences when traveling across a network from one point to another. Alongside bandwidth, reduced latency plays a decisive role in increasing communication speeds.
This results in faster download and upload times, quicker access to resources, and the ability to transport data over longer distances without delays or interruptions.
Today, it takes approximately one minute to download a Full HD movie using a now-common 1 Gbps fiber-optic service. Yet, using advanced transmission techniques, fiber optics have already achieved 15.5 terabits per second over a transatlantic distance of around 7,000 kilometers. At such speeds, it would take roughly 25 seconds to transmit the entire iTunes catalog from Florida to the busy streets of London. It is estimated that a single fiber can carry 250 million phone calls per second.
More recently, a transmission record of 44.2 terabits per second was announced over a distance of approximately 75 kilometers. Under ideal conditions, this would theoretically allow the download of 1,000 movies in a single second, all in high definition—or the equivalent of more than 50 Ultra HD Blu-ray discs (100 GB each) in just one second.
We would like to highlight that dstelecom’s business model focuses on building, managing, and operating a fiber-optic network in low-population-density areas, which is made available on a wholesale basis to the main telecommunications operators. This responsibility requires us to ensure full neutrality and transparency in our services. At the same time, we are committed to ensuring that the key advantages of fiber optics reach every household through telecommunications operators.
