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Wave-Division and Dense-Wave-Division Multiplexing 107

Growing Demands

Clearly, as we begin the new century, the revolution from a voice-
centric network to a data- and video-centric network has permeated
throughout our industries. Communications, once a narrowband ser-
vice dominated by narrowband voice services, now demands the
bandwidth capable of supporting broadband communications, video,
and multimedia. Just about every aspect of our lives has changed.
Business, government, medicine, academia, and entertainment
activities all depend on high-speed communication networking.
Indeed, since commercialization of the Internet, hundreds of millions
of users are now engaged in “surfing” activities, music downloads,
and video conferencing for the first time. The industry has been
struggling to keep up with the explosive pace since 1995. Every pre-
diction that the current fiber technology would hold us for decades
was exaggerated tremendously. Figure 5-1 is a graph that shows the
dramatic changes in the use of telecommunications capacities since
the era began.

What Is Driving the Demand for
Bandwidth?

Over the past decade, the world has been deregulating its telephone
companies, many of which were owned and operated by govern-
ments. These post, telephone, and telegraph companies (PTTs) gen-
erally were monopolies in their respective country. Users had to
accept whatever was offered as part of the regulated entity. New
communications services were introduced when the deregulation
began. As a result, the opportunity to increase communications
interconnectivity and reduce costs was driven by competition.
In the United States, this deregulation began in 1984 with the
AT&T divestiture agreement. Since that event, the cost of communi-
cations has plummeted, whereas the demand for access has sky-
rocketed. The growth in revenues due to access and usage has been
approximately 40 to 45 percent, whereas the costs per minute (or