The technology premise: Carriers have spent billions of dollars installing mega-bandwidth optical networks to carry information long distances.

FORBES: Forget the Garage

Lucent is well poised to help lead an optical revolution that will whip information around the globe at a fraction of today's cost.

FORBES: Wired and Restless

Sending large amounts of information down an optical fibre is done by encoding many separate streams of data as pulses of light of different colours, so that they can travel along the fibre without interfering with each other.

ECONOMIST: Optical fibres could carry more information in the future

Optical computing has been touted as a potential future for information processing, by using packets of light instead of electrons as the information carrier.

BBC: Quantum computer slips onto chips

The superior telecentric optical design improves image quality throughout the frame by passing on information about subjects to the sensor.

ENGADGET: Sigma DP3 Merrill packs a Foveon X3 sensor and a fixed F2.8, 75mm-equivalent lens

Featuring a high performance 50mm F2.8 lens (a focal range equivalent to 75mm on a 35mm SLR camera), the SIGMA DP3 Merrill offers incredibly high levels of optical performance and takes in every detail of the subject's information.

ENGADGET: Sigma DP3 Merrill packs a Foveon X3 sensor and a fixed F2.8, 75mm-equivalent lens

Nokia has filed a patent for an optical messaging system that can generate symbols and Morse Code, as well as decipher the information on the receiving end.

ENGADGET: Nokia files patent for Morse Code-generating cellphone