The war in Iraq has prompted the US military to secure unprecedented access to commercial satellites. It needs to supplement its own substantial satellite data bandwidth to enable full surveillance of Iraq and reliable military communications.

Industry sources say the Pentagon has been scrambling to buy up access to commercial satellites to bolster its own orbiting space fleet. The military needs the bandwidth to support an information-age battle plan that depends on the ability to transmit huge amounts of data to troops in the field, planes in the air and even weapons in flight.

Offering a glimpse of a faster digital future, researchers announced they have set a new Internet speed record by using fiber-optic cables to to transfer 6.7 gigabytes of data in less than a minute.

The U.S. military is having problems providing adequate bandwith for its network-enabled forces.

In the fierce competition for the spectrum, the armed forces are up against broadcasters, cell phone users, satellite link operators, and many others.

With the collapse of the commercial-satellite industry, the Pentagon faces a bandwidth crunch ? a shortage of the communications hardware that links people on the ground and planes in the air.

The effort to track down Osama bin Laden and rid the world of terrorism could be bogged down by clogged pipes on the military's satellite-based information superhighway, forcing the military to purchase satellite time from private companies.

NASA researchers have made significant advances in optical computing that will exponentially increase processor and bandwidth speeds.

A revolutionary new chip that can translate light transmitted by fiber-optic lines into electrical signals could make broadband dreams a reality.

Researchers at Bell Labs have for the first time managed to push an astonishing 3.28 terabits, roughly three times the current global internet traffic, per second of data over a long stretch of fiber-optic cable.