sulting in twice the num- ber of wavelengths per fiber every year. Also, light sources can pulse more bits per second all the time. To top it off, new generations of fiber cable are growing in size, with more than 100 fibers per cable becoming the norm. The result is that optical bandwidth is even outpacing Moore's Law governing growth and processing power. Internet backbones now account for over 85% of the world's cross-border capacity used in fiber-optic networks. The balance of used capacity is dedicated to private corporate networks and international telephone traffic. The submarine capacity currently deployed worldwide provides on the order of 40Tbps of capacity. Not all of this capacity is being used. Only some 11% to 25% of current fiber capac- ity is lit. The remainder lies idle, either unpurchased or unused by service providers, although recent trends suggest that bandwidth demand is growing and the unlit fibers will soon be put into action. Nonetheless, the increase in capacity has resulted in dramatic declines in prices. Customer demand for broadband is growing as prices are falling, and carriers are constantly investing in newer technology. End-to-End Optical Networking At this point in the optical networking revolution, we're striving for what will be an end-to-end optical architecture, which means that nowhere in the network is the End-to-End Optical Networking optical signal converted into an electronic signal. This reduction in the processing of signals would reduce costs and ultimately provide better performance. No other transmission medium can unlock the same level of available band- width as can the visible light spectrum. But today, electronic network equipment acts as the bottleneck. Fibers now can carry terabits per second (Tbps), but they terminate on equipment that, at best, can handle gigabits per second (Gbps). Before we can unleash the possibilities and realize the savings of end-to-end optical networking, we need to replace all the existing electronic equipment with optical equipment,