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CATV: Part 1

Covering distances of 600 route miles and beyond are over 600 long-haul-fiber cables crisscrossing the United States. Traveling at a speed about 31 percent slower than the speed of light in a vacuum, data travels coast to coast in 2/100th of a second, or about 128,000 miles per second. Long-haul fiber connects hundreds of regional fiber networks within the U.S. Regional fiber networks cover multiple states, and within the states are scores of metro fiber rings, or loops (Figure 1). 

Customers of long-haul fiber companies include telephone companies, cable TV companies. government and national defense entities, universities and countless others. Every data center, the largest users of digital information, is connected to multiple long-haul fiber operators as well as multiple local fiber networks (Figure 2). 

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