vailable. Graphene is a possible candidate. Graphene is a form of carbon constructed as a flat layer of carbon atoms packed into a two-dimensional honeycomb arrangement. Its thinness means that it is practically transparent. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper, as a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials. At a molecular scale grapheme could potentially enable a new generation of ultrafast transistors. It might also be suitable for coating windows to collect solar energy and may enable a new generation of supercapacitors. One of the more relevant announcements in terms of telecommunications was from IBM who on 13 June 2011 announced9 the development and production of an integrated circuit made from graphene that performs the function of a broadband frequency mixer operating at frequencies up to 10 gigahertz. The main challenge had been to overcome the fabrica- tion challenges of getting graphene to adhere to metals and oxides. IBM appears to have solved this. Rather nice as the announcement was timed to coincide with IBMs 100-year anniversary. 2.6.2 The Evolution of Photonics Enabling technologies can be shown to have had a similar transformational effect in photon- ics - a parallel universe with an equally fundamental impact on the economics of modern telecommunication systems. Guiding light by refraction, the underlying principal of fibre optic transmission was demonstrated by Daniel Colladon and Jacques Babinet in Paris in the early 1840s with early applications emerging in the medical profession to light up internal body cavities. In 1880 Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the photophone a device that transmitted voice signals over an optical beam, arguably the start of the free-space optical industry (see later in this chapter). The phonograph appeared in the same year. He had already invented the telephone patented in 1874. The gramophone followed in 1887. Optical communications had of course been used for centuries - semaphore systems and beacons for example, but 