Since its invention in the early 1970s, the use and demand of optical fiber has grown tremendously. The uses of optical fiber today are quite numerous. The most common are telecommunications, medicine, military, automotive, and industrial.

Telecommunications applications are widespread, ranging from global networks to local telephone exchanges to subscribers' homes to desktop computers. These involve the transmission of voice, data, or video over distances of less than a meter to hundreds of kilometers, using one of a few standard fiber designs in one of several cable designs.

Companies such as AT&T, MCI, and U.S. Sprint use optical fiber cable to carry plain old telephone service (POTS) across their nationwide networks. Local telephone service providers use fiber to carry this same service between central office switches at more local levels, and sometimes as far as the neighborhood or individual home.

Optical fiber is also used extensively for transmission of data signals. Private networks are owned by firms such as IBM, Rockwell, Honeywell, banks, universities, Wall Street firms, and more. These firms have a need for secure, reliable systems to transfer computer and monetary information between buildings to the desktop terminal or computer, and around the world. The security inherent in optical fiber systems is a major benefit.

Cable television or community antenna television (CATV) companies also find fiber useful for video services. The high information-carrying capacity, or bandwidth, of fiber makes it the perfect choice for transmitting signals to subscribers.

Finally, one of the fastest growing markets for fiber optics is intelligent transportation systems, smart highways with intelligent traffic lights, automated toll booths, and changeable message signs to give motorists information about delays and emergencies.

These are only a few of the many applications possible with the use of optical fiber. Other telecommunications benefits will be emphasized in more detail throughout this text. website focuses primarily on telecommunications uses of optical fiber. To understand these applications, it is important to define fiber optics.

In its simplest terms, fiber optics is a medium for carrying information from one point to another in the form of light. Unlike the copper form of transmission, fiber optics is not electrical in nature.

A basic fiber optic system consists of a transmitting device, which generates the light signal; an optical fiber cable, which carries the light; and a receiver, which accepts the light signal transmitted. The fiber itself is passive and does not contain any active, generative properties.

Corning Cable Systems manufactures and sells those components considered to be part of the passive fiber transmission subsystem; i.e., not active electronic components.

Optical fiber systems have many advantages over metallic-based communication systems. These advantages include:

Long Distance Signal Transmission
The low attenuation and superior signal integrity found in optical systems allow much longer intervals of signal transmission than metallic-based systems. While single-line, voice-grade copper systems longer than a couple of kilometers (1.2 miles) require in-line signal repeaters for satisfactory performance, it is not unusual for optical systems to go over 100 kilometers (km), or about 62 miles, with no active or passive processing. Emerging technologies promise even greater distances in the future.