Short for Optical Local Exchange Carrier, a telephone company that uses a fiber-optic system as opposed to traditional passive, twisted-pair copper wires to connect equipment at the customer premises to carrier facilities. Optical access increases access-network bandwidth by up to several gigabits per second, which is an important development in data communication services. The copper wire system creates a bottleneck in the access network, which slows down the rate of data transfer and is therefore not able to support activities that need ultrahigh bandwidths, such as high-quality videoconferencing, large file transfers, data mirroring and data-storage warehousing.
Federal Communications Commission Users can search the official site of the FCC for information on the latest regulations involving bandwidth technology.
Federal Communications Commission Users can search the official site of the FCC for information on the latest regulations involving bandwidth technology.
Fiber-Optic Technology Tutorial This tutorial explains how optical-access platforms unblock the bandwidth bottleneck between the customer premises equipment and the central office.
