Check this out:It's not like we haven't seen consortiums working...

Check this out:
It's not like we haven't seen consortiums working to establish better links between America and Asia, but the more the merrier, right? Apparently, Verizon Business has just recently received the all-important thumbs-up from the FCC to "activate and operate the Trans-Pacific Express submarine cable system in the US." The TPE cable is hailed as "the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the US and mainland China," and is the first major system of its kind to land on America's West Coast (Oregon, to be precise) in over seven years. For those curious, the 10,563-mile submarine communications cable will be able to support the equivalent of 62 million simultaneous phone calls -- which is "more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing cable directly linking the US and China" -- and will initially provide capacity of up to 1.28Tbps. So, when will this thing be up and running? If all goes to plan, it should be fully operational by August (you know, prior to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing).

What's that got to do with ARU you might ask? Well...

There are several different types of optical amplifiers being used in today's optical communication systems. In general, the two primary types of optical amplifiers are optical fiber based amplifiers, such as erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) and Raman amplifiers, and semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). Rare-earth doped, optical-fiber amplifiers are used in a wide variety of communications applications to generate appropriate high-power optical signals. Rare-earth doped optical amplifiers use rare-earth ions as the active element. The ions are doped in the fiber core and pumped optically to provide gain. The silica core serves as the host medium for the ions. Erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) rely on a pump laser to excite erbium atoms doping several meters of optical fiber. Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers typically comprise at least one pump laser whose output is optically coupled to the input of one or more serially connected coils of erbium-doped optical fiber. When a light signal passes through the excited doped fiber, the erbium reverts to its unexcited energy state and gives up the pump energy as a photon of the same wavelength as the light signal triggering the reversion. The pump light usually has a wavelength of 980 or 1480 nm. When a transmission signal, using having a wavelength in the 1550 nm range, propagates through the amplifying fiber, this light stimulates the erbium atoms to release their stored energy as additional 1550 nm light waves which continues as the transmission signals propagates through the amplifying fiber. While many different rare-earth ions, such as neodymium, praseodymium, and ytterbium, can be used to provide gain in different portions of the spectrum, erbium-doped optical amplifiers have proven to be particularly attractive because they are operable in the spectral region where optical loss in the silica core is minimal. Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers operate at wavelengths that reduce fiber and component losses and minimize dispersion effects. EDFAs are also attractive from a telecommunications standpoint because they produce high gain with relatively little noise and demonstrate polarization independency.