1.   The fiber-to-the-curb architecture provides high-capacity switched digital network services to optical network units serving multiple residences.

2.   Anyway, something called optical networks promise infinite bandwidth, and infinite bandwidth is what we live for.

3.   A profitable company already, Optical resembles Ixia, a Calabasas maker of optical network testing equipment that held a successful IPO last month.

4.   Business had been growing by leaps and bounds at Sycamore, the high-profile maker of optical network equipment based in Chelmsford, Mass.

5.   But optical networks, which transmit information using pulses of light modulated by lasers, can be much more efficient than copper networks using pulses of electricity.

6.   But with a high-speed optical network like Africa One, Ghana, Kenya, and Kentucky would become digital next-door neighbors.

7.   Currently, capacity is so constrained throughout the optical network industry that customers are forced to buy amplifiers and lasers and other components wherever they can find them.

8.   Eventually, they may be able to go to completely optical networks, depending instead on devices the size of breadboxes, or smaller.

9.   Equipe, a one-year-old telecommunications equipment vendor, makes optical network devices that allow information to travel quickly along fiber optic lines.

10.   In most traditional communications networks, the role of the ship is played by a technology known as Sonet, for synchronous optical network.