Global communication, and in particular internet and long-distance telephony, is now based
primarily on optical fiber technology (see Fig. 5). As pointed out above, the main advantage of
optical waves compared to radio waves is the high frequencies that allow high data transmission
rate. Nowadays, several terabits per second can be transmitted in a single fiber which represents
an increase by a factor of one million to what could be achieved fifty years ago with radio signal
transmission. The number of optical fiber cables being installed all over the world is increasing
rapidly. Fiber optics has also been important for a huge number of other applications, in medicine,
laser technology and sensors. An interesting example of the use of fiber-optic communication
in science is the advanced fiber optics network developed at the Large Hadron Collider at
CERN in Geneva that will transfer large amounts of information obtained by the particle
detectors to computer centers all over the world.