Moore’s Law states that about every two years computer processing speed doubles.

The number of transistors which fit into a microprocessor reached over 10 billion in 2017. It was under 10,000 in 1971.

I’m old enough to remember soldering firecracker sized transistors onto a 6” X 6” circuit board to assemble the transistor radio kit I got for Christmas. That feels like only one step ahead of driving a horse and buggy.

So what? Who cares?

Apparently we all do because we’ve become a society of gluttons of technology.

We want it by the Gigabyte and we want it within Milliseconds.

As I tour construction sites throughout my corner of the country and see the sheer volume of copper cabling that goes into a building it’s becoming more evident to me that we might be approaching a threshold of what can be accomplished utilizing copper-based topologies to satisfy our appetites.

We want everything to be wireless, and much of it can be from a users perspective, but wireless connectivity needs to be supported by a physical infrastructure. On the other side of that equation we’re adding devices that require a physical connection to the internet at a startling pace. It’s estimated that by 2023 there will be over 30 billion devices connected to the internet globally. That is almost 4X what the estimated global population will be in 2023!

The convergence of wireless and optical networks is the future of internet connectivity and a response to how we work, play and learn.

Most of us have not yet heard about Fiber Deep Networks or Passive Optical Networks but they are the future.

How do I know? Moore’s Law says it’s so!

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” L.P. Hartley 1895-1972