Fast fibres

Residents of Atlanta, Georgia, have been promised superfast Internet access
by 2001. Local phone company BellSouth plans to make the first fibre-optic
connections directly to homes and is soon to test the technology at 400 houses.
Until now, most fibre-optic telecoms networks have used wire for the final
connection to houses, but this has limited the bandwidth available. BellSouth’s
fibres will provide Web and television services at 100 megabits per
second—2000 times faster than a standard 56-kilobit modem.