BUBBLES could soon be steering your phone calls and e-mail around the
world—and doing so faster and more reliably than ever before, thanks to
the invention of optical telephone exchange switches that don’t have any moving
parts.
In today’s telephone exchanges, electronic switches route phone calls or data
connections to their destinations. But to do the same to light beams requires
switches with moving parts, such as arrays of minuscule mirrors. Engineers fear
that it will be difficult to align these tiny moving parts precisely enough, and
that they will wear out quickly.
Now Agilent Technologies in California and…
