This is in response/addendum to BevvyB:
The connections soon enough will be faster than what you have predicted. 64 bit, 192khz, real-time, with video of the studio that made it - easy.
Lucent technologies successfully tested a new fiber optic line over a year ago...
The speed?
3.2 TERRABYTES per second.
"A length of fiber long enough to circle the globe three times is produced every day, and if you extrapolate current trends to 2010, every one of the 6 billion people on earth will have a bandwidth capability equivalent to high-definition television," said Alistair Glass, director of photonics research and development at Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories. Arriving at Bell Labs in 1967, Glass' career spans the development and implementation of fiber-optic communications systems.
So yes, we will be waving goodbye to compression for transfers, but this technology does not solve the problem of STORAGE. Is your harddrive 3.2 Terrabytes? Didn't think so. Alas, fiber optic storage "cubes" are coming about...and the proposed space available in these will be measured around "infinite" (as in too much damn space for you to count and/or fill).
Weee. Technology is fun.
