Fiber optic system clears way for future economic possibilities

The first decade of the 21st century is almost over, and we're still not commuting to work in pneumatic tubes or strapping on our jetpacks to run to the store.

There are advances of which, however, sci-fi dreamers of a half century ago could never have dreamed.

One of them was unveiled Tuesday with a tour of Cambridge Telephone Co.'s new state-of-the-art infrastructure upgrade.

Financed through a USDA Rural Utilities Service loan of $8.23 million, the project has brought a new broadband fiber optic "pipeline" to every home in Cambridge and will move the project to Bartley next sumer.

Thanks to the project, Bartley and Cambridge residents will have some of the best aspects of both worlds -- the low cost, slow pace of rural life and high-speed communication with the rest of the world.

The possibilities are endless, from entertainment and communications to business applications, distance learning and telemedicine.

Just how "broad" is the new broadband service?

You may recall that digital communications involves a series of 1's and 0's called bits, eight of which comprise a byte. The new fiber optic system can deliver a thousand, thousand, thousand bytes -- a gigabyte -- in a second.

That's 894,784 pages of plain text or 4,473 200-page books, 341 3-mgb digital pictures, 256 MP3 audio files or one 650 mb CD.

That's a lot of data, certainly enough for high-quality streaming video or other applications like "commuting" to work at the speed of light -- no jetpack could make that possible.

How else will it be used?

We probably don't have any better an idea than someone in the 1950s could have had looking forward to today. But we're sure residents of the next decades will be thankful the infrastructure they will need was put in place today.