(RT) The Internet could face an imminent ‘capacity crunch’ as soon as in eight years, should it fail to provide faster data, UK scientists say. The cables and fiber optics that deliver the data to users will have reached their limit by 2023.
Optical cables are transparent strands the thickness of a human hair: the data is transformed into light, and is sent down the fiber, and then turns back into information.
“We are starting to reach the point in the research lab where we can’t get any more data into a single optical fiber. The deployment to market is about six to eight years behind the research lab – so within eight years that will be it, we can’t get any more data in,” Professor Andrew Ellis, of Aston University in Birmingham, told the Daily Mail.
