Our bandwidth hunger will soon cause the current internet (network) to be grossly over-capacity. According to a new article in the NY Times, Wider Streets for Internet Traffic, scientists are working hard to pack each optical fiber with more information to allow bigger and more expansive networks for the future. New systems of transmission will allow for both polarization and phases of light to encode data, which should more than double capacity of a single fiber.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/business/10novel.html, October 9, 2010, ANNE EISENBERG