A lot of terms for the same thing. The first optical fibers were invented in the early 1950s but weren't ready for widespread commercial use until manufacturing processes had been perfected by the late 1970s. Thin strands of fiber can carry immense amounts of digital data via rapid-fire pulses of light. Think about the difference between various wires and cables as water flowing through pipes. The telephone line is like a garden hose.
Coaxial cable is like a fire hose.
But fiber-optic cable is like a concrete conduit 6 feet across. An optical fiber the width of a human hair can carry 1,000 times as much information as all the radio frequencies combined. That's why many people expect that, over time, space hogs like television images will travel through the ground while most voice conversations will move through the air. In short, television and telephone transmissions will switch places. Of course, real life is never that simple.