Faster Long Haul Communications?

Though neither technology is not commercially viable, two different techniques could speed up long distance communications and slice double-digit milliseconds off communications across some routes.

By getting optical signal propagation speed up to 99.7 percent of the speed of light, from the current 70 percent of light-speed, the best-case trip from Australia to the US would be cut from about 43 milliseconds to about 30 milliseconds, ignoring router hops and optical signal regeneration.

A research team from the University of Southampton in England achieved the faster speeds by taking the glass out of the glass fiber and creating a "hollow-core photonic-bandgap fiber."

The methods used by the researchers result in loss of 3.5 decibels per km, loss too high for undersea routes, for example.

Separately, some speculate that neutrinos could be used to send communications “through the earth,” achieving lower latency communications because the routes would be shorter than any cable route on the surface of the earth.

A signal sent between London and Sydney would shave abou 44 milliseconds off the fastest current alternative, for example.

There is one major problem, that being the need for a particle accelerator at each end, costing perhaps $1 billion each.