ll created the semiconductor injection laser in 1962 and Kumar Patel produced the first carbon dioxide laser in 1964. In 1965 Charles Kao and George Hockham suggested that attenuation in fibre was partly caused by impurities that could be removed. This paved the way for low-loss high-purity silica glass-based optical transmission. An attenuation limit of 20 dB/km was achieved in 1970. At the time this represented a significant performance threshold. In 1986 David Payne at the University of Southampton and Emmanuel Desuvire at Bell Labs codeveloped the erbium- doped fibre amplifier. The combination of low-loss fibre, relatively low-cost lasers and efficient amplification meant that optical communication could compete with and then overhaul copper in terms of cost per bit. However, what we are trying to establish are the relative technology economics of fibre against copper, cable and wireless - both in terms of relative cost as at today and the relative cost economics going forward - a simple question with a complicated answer. A starting point is to differentiate between long-haul transmission, core transmission and local access. Long-haul can be across distances of thousands of kilometres at very high aggregated data rates; core transmission is typically over shorter distances but at very high aggregated data rates, both realise high multiplexing gain. Local access is typically from a local switch servicing individual premises and individual users within those premises at lower aggregated rates. Some but not all of the technologies and techniques used in long-haul and core transmission translate across into the local access domain but per premises cost and per user cost becomes far more dominant than per bit cost and is particularly influenced by the material and installation cost of the fibre, the cost of transceivers and connectors and the cost of signal splitting or time or frequency multiplexing. These factors are less dominant in core transmission and long-haul systems. Fibre is now capable of supporting da