Market research firm Infonetics Research predicts that overall worldwide PON equipment revenue will top US$2 billion in 2009 for the first time. That figure will more than double by 2013, the company adds, when it will reach US$4.2 billion.
Archive December 2009
Internet Censure – Big Brother in our neck of the woods? Dec 17
1 CommentA battle of words is raging in Australia over the Government’s decision to impose internet filtering, ie censure on the web sites we are allowed to visit. The right of free speech seems to be fragile under the present Minister Steve Conroy and his Labour majority.
Here are some of the comments published yesterday and today:
“Welcome to National Censorship Day”
“Conroy’s blind adherence to his net filtering plan will abandon net neutrality ideals and push ISPs down a slippery slope of unprecedented responsibility for a callously politicised Australian internet.”
“Brave Labor MP rejects Conroy’s filter plan”
“NSW Labor MP Penny Sharpe has slammed her Federal colleagues’ plan to censor the internet.
Sharpe said the announcement was “a backward step” that, if adopted, would be “a triumph of fear and false promise [over] good sense”
“The Australian Government’s plan for mandatory filtering of a broad range of ‘refused classification content’ will put Australia at odds with almost every other liberal Western democracy and align it with states such as Belarus, Eritrea, The UAE, Yemen and Zimbabwe that force all ISPs to remove ‘inappropriate content’ from their services, according to a new research study.”
Anybody who has tried to use the internet in China would have encountered the nonsensical blocking of innocent sites which have no political bias or cultural sensitivity. Some public servant in a back room just decides that this or that site is not good for local consumption and bingo, its gone!
It will be a sad day if Australia adopts this course. And I hope that Wellington is not even thinking about it.
Scientists squeeze more out of light Dec 10
No CommentsScientists at the University of Adelaide, Australia, have put the squeeze on light. By discovering that light within optical fibers can be squeezed into much tighter spaces than was previously believed possible, the researchers at the University’s Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) have claimed a breakthrough that could change the world’s thinking on light’s capabilities, especially when it comes to its use in telecommunications, such as fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), computing and other light sources.
To get light to travel along an optical fiber, it must concentrated, aimed and bounced along the inside walls of the fiber which acts like a pipe for light. But as the size of the fiber shrinks (in our never-ending quest for smaller, faster, better), the light becomes more and more confined too, until it reaches the ultimate limit – the point beyond which it cannot be squeezed any smaller.
This ultimate point occurs when the strand of glass (fiber) is just a few hundred nanometers in diameter, about one thousandth of the size of a human hair. If you go smaller than this, light begins to spread out again.
The Adelaide researchers say they have discovered a way in which they can push beyond that limit by at least a factor of two. They can do this due to new breakthroughs in the theoretical understanding of how light behaves at the nanoscale, and by using a new generation of nanoscale optical fibers being developed at the institute.
This discovery by IPAS Reserach Fellow Dr Shahraam Afshar is expected to lead to more efficient tools for optical data processing in telecommunications networks and optical computing, as well as new light sources. Federation Fellow at the University of Adelaide and Director of IPAS, Prof Tanya Monro, says Dr Afshar’s discovery is “a fundamental breakthrough in the science of light”.
“By being able to use our optical fibers as sensors – rather than just using them as pipes to transmit light – we can develop tools that, for example, could easily detect the presence of a flu virus at an airport; could help IVF (in vitro fertilization) specialists to determine which egg should be chosen for fertilization; could gauge the safety of drinking water; or could alert maintenance crews to corrosion occurring in the structure of an aircraft,” says Professor Monro.
Another IPAS researcher, Dr Yinlan Ruan, also recently created what is thought to be the world’s smallest hole inside an optical fiber – just 25 nanometers in diameter.
“These breakthroughs feed directly into our applied work to develop nanoscale sensors,” Prof Monro says. “They will enable us to study the applications of light at much smaller scales than we’ve ever thought possible. It will help us to better understand and probe our world in ever smaller dimensions.”