“Internet”, The quintessential commodities of modern life, has seen exponential increase of its usage over the last few years due to the digital revolution happening around us. Every business from banking, e-commerce, manufacturing, retail, healthcare is rapidly adopting digital technologies like AI, Cloud, Analytics in order to stay relevant in this hyper competitive market. It is even difficult for most of us to lead a normal life without the help of internet. COVID-19, the pandemic, confined mankind within the boundary of their home, millions of people compelled to work from home and stuck to their computers than ever before. Buzzing of images, videos in social media making socialization in digital canvas. Vodafone already declared in a recent article that data traffic increase by 50% in some markets. Online services are being obstructed, broadband downloading speed becoming low and FWA has limitation.

So, are we ready to tackle this crucial situation?

Internet over Optical Fibre: The solution

Optical Fibreinternet is faster than average broadband speeds, cost-effective, safe, high speed download capabilityand it is more reliable than copper and far more stable than Wireless, mobile connectivity . If your broadband download speed is 50Mbps, (extremely generous – average internet speeds only just topped 18.7Mbps in 2017), downloading a game, 100 songs, a full HD quality movie or 100 photos is up to 20 times faster with a Gigabit Fibre connection. A household minimum broadband speed guide, provided by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as browsing, email, and social media, need 1Mbps, video calls 6Mbps, streaming HD video 5-8 Mbps etc. This is awfullyvaluable in the time of remote work, due to Coronavirus.

When optical fibre technology started?

Euclid, also called Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician who was born between the year of 320 and 324 BC. In his Optica, he noted that light travels in straight lines and described the law of reflection. In 1854, John Tyndall demonstrated to the Royal Society that light could be conducted through a curved stream of water which providing evidence that a light signal could be bent. The American scientist David Smith applied for a patent on a bent glass rod device to be used as a surgical lamp, in 1898. In 1961, Elias Snitzer of American Optical Corporation published a theoretical description of single mode fiber. That idea was for a medical instrument looking inside the human which is the threshold of the optical fiber. sensing, but the fiber had a light loss of 1000 dB/km and even more. A further theoretical specification was identified by the Nobel Prize winner Dr. C. K. Kao for long-range communication devices and he concluded that the fundamental limitation for glass light attenuation is below 20 dB/km in 1964. Communications devices needed to operate over much longer distances and required a low light loss of no more than 10 or 20 dB/km.  This conclusion opened the intense contest to find low-loss materials and suitable fibers for reaching such criteria.

Breaking hindrance

In 1969, Kao illustrated the need for a purer form of glass to help reduce light loss and Kao with M.W. Jones measured the intrinsic loss of bulk-fused silica at 4 dB/km. After this, Robert Maurer, Donald Keck and Peter Schultzinvestigated fused silica of extreme purity, a high melting point and a low refractive index. In 1970, Corning Glass researchers solved the problems presented by Dr. Kao by inventing Optical Fiber which is efficient of carrying 65,000 times more information than copper wire. Since then the technology has been improving day by day and the current state of art fabricated fibers have losses even less than 0.2 dB/km at communication wavelength 1.55µm. 

Commercial availability of optical fiber internet, which change the game

In 1975, the U.S. government had used Fibre optic cables to link two computers, reducing interference.Chicago became home to the first Fibre optic telephone communication systems, which were concealed underneath the city. At that time, the optical Fibre carried what is equivalent to 672 voice channels. In 1988, the first transatlantic Fibre-optic cable, TAT-8, transmitted data across the ocean floor from New Jersey to England and France. It was efficient of handling 40,000 simultaneous voice calls.Today more than 90 percent of the world’s long-distance traffic is conceded over optical fiber cables.

Who offers Fibre optic internet?

Over 200 internet service providers offer Fibre optic internet like Verizon, AT&T, Tata Communication, Comcast and Google Fibre etc. In India, Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Airtel, Sify Technologies etc. are helping the huge working force to work from home in this coronavirus time as front-line warrior to run India.

Major reasons why optical Fibre internet is future of world? A lesson from COVID-19 time 

1. Most versatile technology creating backbone of 5G, WIFI, satellite so far.
2. Dreaming to live in smarthome and security?It will be possible by Internet of Things. Robotic surgery, professional telecommunication, distance learning, telemedicine etc. are going to be our part of life. These all technologies are possible when 5G accelerated by optical fibre internet.
3. Transportation and power generation are two biggest impacts on global warming. High speed Fibre internet connectivity ensure remote work to reduce both.
4. Don’t be surprise! Data indicates that high speed or broadband internet will improve the economic climate.
5. Could you remember the incident of 2019, Kingdom of Tonga faced crucial moment for few days due to cut off under marine optical Fibre? So, don’t remain in myth that internet connectivity is wireless. Hundreds of undersea optical Fibrecables controlling international data traffic.Yes, Wait for future high-speed connectivity.

6.COVID-19 outbreak changes the current scenario unpredictable than ever before. The remote working may become a preferable custom if the global workforce working remotely,report remarkably higher productivity during lockdown time. Consequently, the pandemic lesson will prepare us for the high bandwidth demands of tomorrow.

Government of any country should plan for tomorrow by investing on optical Fibre internet project. R & D sector needs to think more. Private sector should focus more on this technology and application related to it. Economy of any country lagging behind, they should make strategy promptly on optical Fibre internet. We are approaching not virtual connection, it would be physical, lively, united and progressive for human being.