Just to narrow this down a little more I would suspect that WECo experimentation must have been at least closer to the early part of the mid 70's (if that makes sense). I was working at our (BC Tel) "HEmlock" CO in Vancouver in early (March-April) 1979 when BC Tel's first fibre optic installation was turned up to see how it performed. It was CO trunking between HEmlock CO (SxS and a #1 EAX) in Vancouver and CYpress (SxS) CO a few miles North East in Burnaby.
Terry
Quite possibly so.
Volume 2 (Facilities) of "Telecommunications Transmission Engineering" published in 1977, only briefly mentions optical transmission in the Section entitled "Digital Systems":
The flexibility that has been provided in the digital h ierarchy permits
future expansion to include higher transmission rates and a
number of other features. For example, an experimental coder-decoder
( codec ) has been developed to permit the translation from an analog
to digital (and digital to analog) format of 720 telephone channels.
This digital mastergroup signal is transmitted at the DS3 rate [ 1 ] .
The mastergroup and other broadband codecs will permit the efficient
use of new technology such as waveguide and optical fiber ( lightwave )
communications systems by providing economical means for interconnecting
these and existing analog systems.
"Engineering and Operations in the Bell System" (2n ed.) stated in 1983:
Compared with metallic Tl, the FT3 lightwave system employs a
smaller cable, requires no intermediate repeaters, and has- greater growth
capability. The FT3C system, introduced in 1983, operates at 90 Mbps
and provides twice the capacity of FT3 by transmitting two 44.7-Mbps
signals over the same fiber.And finally, I am now looking at my copy of 'Transmission Technology (1925-1975)" of the series
A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System. It was first published in 1985.
- In 1970, Bell Labs first achieved continuous operation of a semiconductor laser at room temperature.
- In 1972, at Corning Glass, transmission losses as low as 4dB per kilometer were achieved with wavelength of ca. 1 µm.
- In 1974, at Bell Labs, a significant advance was the use of chemical vapor deposition to make tubular glass preforms.
- By the mid-1970s, fibers drawn from such preforms produced losses of 1 dB per kilometer. By mid-1980s the losses had been
reduced to 0.16 dB.
Ok, here is the apparent root of the effort, in chapter 5.5
The First Systems Work—The Atlanta Experiment.:
By 1974, personnel were transferred from research to the transmission systems area of Bell Laboratories, where they joined forces with engineers skilled in digital transmission systems, to investigate the characteristics and features required in commercial light-wave systems....
In 1974, planning began for a complete light-wave system experiment at the 45-megabit rate. ....
The experiment was implemented in late 1975 at the joint Western Electric-Bell Laboratories facility in Atlanta, Georgia, where the fiber and cable was made and underground ducts typical of those in metropolitan areas were available....
5.6 Post-1975
The success at Atlanta spurred further work....
... a successful trial of similar nature but with a smaller cable (24 fibers) was held in 1977 in the urban environment of downtown Chicago.So, no mentioning of Omaha in all those developments.
