Speed need: pushing cable capacity to the edge

How far can communications cable wire-speeds be pushed? The theoretical limits of the past are being exceeded due to new bit-rate acceleration techniques. The increases in network bandwidth over 25 years of public data communications have been every bit as extraordinary as those in storage density or processing power as enshrined by Moore's Law. Indeed, according to that law, which predicts a doubling in performance every two years, maximum data speeds would have increased some 4,000-fold between the time of the first generally available online services in 1987 and 2011.