Across the tera

Fibre optics has increased the data transmission speeds between computers considerably but applications like video conferencing require even more speed. Now for the first time, three separate groups have crossed the terabit threshold. These researchers from Fujitsu, Nippon Telephone and AT&T have used a new technique to transmit more than one terabit of information in a second through optical fibres. The essential idea is to use multiple lasers beams of slightly different wavelengths, thereby increasing the information transmitted ( Communications of ACM , May, 1996).