What Are Fibre Optics Used For?

Sending electronic data using light pulses thru tubes called fiber optics. Wires usually have strands of copper the legnth of the wire being used insulated by the exterior coating, fiber optic wire is hollow with that inner surface of the tube with reflective material so it can pass light all the way down it uninterupted. Fiber optic cable can never get crimped or bent like wire or it will be useless, the light will be unable to travel when it hits that kind of problem. Fiber optics is expensive for this reason for example.

     That is partly true. Fiber optic cables are not hollow tubes but bundles of solid strands of pure silicone glass streached thinner than a human hair. The glass is coated with a material to keep laser light in the glass core. If there was no coated material, called cladding, then the silicone fiber glass would become brittle over time, the laser light would bounce throught the glass and become lost, and the glass would become cloudy severly deteriorating the laser signal.
     Fiber optic cable is not brittle because the optic strand is so thin. The strand is about as bendable as your hair. The cable is also bendable but limited only to 10X the thickness of its diameter. Todays fiber optic cables are approximately as thick as a person's pinky for a cable up to 96 fibers, to1-1/4" for a cable up to 928 fibers. It was expensive because there must be absolutely no impurities in the silicone glass. Any impurity will cause the laser light to deflect if it hits this impurity. The deflection will cause the signal to travel further down the strand, but that is easily compensated for. It is another reason to clad the fiber strand. The cladding allows the light to be reflected back into the fiber core.
     I say WAS expensive because there is a revolution going on in the communications industry, both in telecommunications and in CATV. Copper and the making of copper cables have skyrocketed in the past years. It in now cheaper to make fiber optic cables and transmit laser light over them. This not only brings costs down but has the added benefit of allowing a medium to transmit information over a broad electrical spectrum. A person can now receive telephone conversations faster, get ultrafast internet service, and receive television signals with astonishing clarity. And not  just one service per fiber but all services on one fiber optic strand. As an example a 432 fiber cable use to serve as many telephones as a 3600 pair (7200 wire!) cable. This cable was over 3-3/4" in diameter, slightly thinner than a 2 liter soda bottle. A 432 fiber cable is just 1-1/8" in diameter. Now this very same cable only serves 432 homes. But these homes are provided with all the communications services a person wants!
     It is actually true. A doctor in the United States can help a doctor in Thiland perform delicate open heart bypass surgery IN REAL TIME using a television screen, TV camera and michrophone all connected to a fiber optic network. Unheard of even 20 years ago. And this is because fiber optic signals travel at the Speed of Light.