Even as U.S. telcos drag their feet and make excuses for not rolling out high-speed fiber-optical connections, researchers are pushing fiber technology forward, breaking records in speed, distance, and efficiency.

Next week, at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC) in Anaheim, California, scientists will gather to discuss their latest breakthroughs. This includes everything from a new breed of fiber-optic cable to new low-power techniques for using fiber inside supercomputers, but the headliner comes from AT&T Labs-Research.

AT&T scientists have developed new techniques capable of transmitting data at 400 Gbs across about 7,500 miles of fiber. That's roughly 400 times the speed of Google Fiber – the much-ballyhooed fiber network the search giant operates in Kansas City – and it doesn't require new infrastructure. AT&T researchers served its speed record over existing 100 Gbs networks.

To do this, the researchers lead by Xiang Zhou at AT&T Labs-Research created a new modulation technique that enables them to use the available spectrum more efficiently. Zhou says that although researchers have been able to transmit at 12,000 km using slower connections; this is a new distance record for this speed and efficiency. The breakthrough should be a boon for those depending on long-distance fiber-optic connections – such as undersea lines.

While AT&T works on optimizing transmissions, a group of researchers at the fiber optics equipment manufacturer AFL have developed a way to make faster fiber optic infrastructure more practical. Fiber cables can be bundled together into "multicore fibers." Up to 19 fibers can be bundled together, resulting in 19 times as much signal carrying capacity.

But splicing these fibers is a pain. The researchers compare it to trying to to take a two bundles of try spaghetti and trying to perfectly align each and every noodle from both bunches. Up til now, this could only be done manually, and the lack of an automated splicing process has prevented the spread of multicore fibers into real-world applications.

The AFL team uses a splicer equipped with two video cameras and a pattern matching algorithm to roughly match the cores. Then the device uses a power-feedback method and image processing techniques to more finely align the cores before heat splicing them. If the multicore fibers are manufactured with a standard design, this automatic splicing should make it possible for telecommunications companies to adopt these much more efficient fiber optic cables.

Meanwhile, a team of DARPA-funded IBM researchers are using fiber optics for a different purpose: transmitting large amounts of data within a supercomputer. These researchers have found a way to double the speed of transmission while cutting the energy required in half. Unlike the AT&T researchers, the IBM/DARPA scientists are working over very short distances. The research will help next generation supercomputers operate faster and use less electricity.