 with dozens of new fibre-optic networks being installed. The oversupply of fibre optic cable is mostly limited to the long-distance networks, which were built first. Thus commercial prices of fibre optic long distance are difficult to pin down currently both because prices are still falling steeply due to over-supply and because the developments outlined above are reducing the new cost per channel. One way to judge price deflation is to look at the wholesale market, in a developed country such as the United States. According to RateXchange in 2001, 56 a US electronic broker for telecommunications carriers to trade bandwidth capacity wholesale, a connection running at 155 Mbps from Los Angeles to New York cost about USD 45 000 a month in October 2000. That price fell to USD 35 000 in March 2001 but was expected to be USD 450 in January 2002 for the new generation of equipment. A 155 Mbps connection in 2001 could handle about 42 million minutes of calls per month. Today's optical technology can increase that capacity at least ten times. The key point is that the launch equipment may be the only part of the network that has to be changed; if it is of a fairly recent technology, the actual fibre stays the same and there are thousands of strands in the ground. By this approach, in 2002/03, US carriers upgraded many long-distance networks to 10 Gbps, from 2.5 Gbps. The US infrastructure spend before 2000 shows the order of (over) expansion in fibre capacity today and possibly for some years to come. Capital equipment spending by US telecommunications carriers grew 36% from 1998 to USD 77.1 billion in 1999, and another 35% in 2000. But spending fell in 2001 by some 13% from the previous year and then reduced to some USD 74 billion by 2003, a fall of about 29%. The drop in spending means carriers will spend less to use their networks, because it costs more to activate the networks than to leave them inactive, as "dark fibre", i.e. unlit. Thus the amount of fibre not being used may be increasing, to shore up prices, whil