It should enable 90% of homes and businesses to have access to fibre broadband by the end of 2016.

BBC: Coleford Clock Tower

To do so, he dipped the end of an optical fibre into a bead of molten gallium, then allowed the gallium to freeze, creating the mirror.

ECONOMIST: Optical communications: Swish switches | The

Those that have managed to build a textile industry, such as Lesotho and Mauritius, have suffered from Chinese competition and the end of the Multi-Fibre Agreement, which set quotas for exports from poor countries.

ECONOMIST: Africa's economy

Current plans mean that fibre will go as far as the cabinet at the end of the street and copper wires will connect to homes.

BBC: A slow route to faster broadband

TeleGeography reckons that new transatlantic capacity will not be needed until 2013, ten years after the end of the boom, and that the supply of terrestrial fibre will last far longer.

ECONOMIST: Booms and busts