A Fiber-Optic Chronology(5)

January 1980: AT&T asks Federal Communications Commission to approve Northeast Corridor system from Boston to Washington, designed to carry three different wavelengths through graded-index fiber at 45 Mbit/s.

Winter 1980: Graded-index fiber system carries video signals for 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, at 850 nanometers.

February 1980: STL and British Post Office lay 9.5 km submarine cable in Loch Fyne, Scotland, including single-mode and graded-idex fibers

1980: Bell Labs publicly commits to single-mode 1.3-micrometer technology for the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable, TAT-8.

September 1980: With fiber optics hot on the stock market, M/A Com buys Valtec for $224 million in stock.

July 27, 1981: ITT signs consent agreement to pay Corning and license Corning communication fiber patents.

1981: Commercial second-generation systems emerge, operating at 1.3 micrometers through graded-index fibers.

1981: British Telecom transmits 140 million bits per second through 49 kilometers of single-mode fiber at 1.3 micrometers, starts shifting to single-mode.

Late 1981: Canada begins trial of fiber optics to homes in Elie, Manitoba.

1982: British Telecom performs field trial of single-mode fiber, changes plans abandoning graded-index in favor of single-mode.

December 1982: MCI leases right of way to install single-mode fiber from New York to Washington. The system will operate at 400 million bits per second at 1.3 micrometers. This starts the shift to single-mode fiber in America.

Late 1983: Stew Miller retires as head of Bell Labs fiber development group.

January 1, 1984: AT&T undergoes first divestiture, splitting off its seven regional operating companies, but keeping long-distance transmission and equipment manufacture.

1984: British Telecom lays first submarine fiber to carry regular traffic, to the Isle of Wight.

1985: Single-mode fiber spreads across America to carry long-distance telephone signals at 400 million bits per second and up.

Summer 1986: All 1500 homes connected to Biarritz fiber to the home system.

October 30, 1986: First fiber-optic cable across the English Channel begins service.

1986: AT&T sends 1.7 billion bits per second through single-mode fibers originally installed to carry 400 million bits per second.

1987: Dave Payne at University of Southampton develops erbium-doped fiber amplifier operating at 1.55 micrometers.

1988: Linn Mollenauer of Bell Labs demonstrates soliton transmission through 4000 kilometers of single-mode fiber.

December 1988: TAT-8 begins service, first transatlantic fiber-optic cable, using 1.3-micrometer lasers and single-mode fiber.

February 1991: Masataka Nakazawa of NTT reports sending soliton signals through a million kilometers of fiber.

February 1993: Nakazawa sends soliton signals 180 million kilometers, claiming "soliton transmission over unlimited distances."

February 1993: Linn Mollenauer of Bell Labs sends 10 billion bits through 20,000 kilometers of fibers using a simpler soliton system.

February 1996: Fujitsu, NTT Labs, and Bell Labs all report sending one trillion bits per second through single optical fibers in separate experiments using different techniques.