Broadband speeds 'could benefit from time telescope'

19:29 30th September 2009

A new study has suggested broadband internet could be speeded up by a so-called time telescope.

In news that may interest people considering IT careers, researchers found this method could squeeze more information into the data packets sent around the internet.

It works by focusing information-carrying light pulses in time rather than in space and is made up of laser beams that combine in a tiny silicon structure to compress the pulses.

According to a description in Nature Photonics, a prototype telescope boosted the data rate of telecoms-wavelength pulses by 27 times.

Cornell University's Mark Foster, lead author of the research, told the BBC: "The most surprising thing for me was seeing it all work.

"You spend a lot of time designing and modelling the system and putting it all together and it is always surprising and exciting to see it work as well as you imagined it would."

In other IT industry news, the US is set to sign an accord with international regulator Icann that will see it agreeing to relax control over how the internet is run.

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