That is 10 times the rate of the world's highest-capacity commercial system. A 40-gigabit system could handle 2.5 million simultaneous phone calls or an equivalent mix of voice, data and video. Continuing Bell Labs laser research has led to the invention of an array of lasers that may have significant implications for telecommunications, computers and consumer electronics. This technology combines optical input and output with electronic logic, which greatly increases the efficiency of chips at today's processing speeds. The U.S. telecommunications network has been described as the world's largest system of interconnected computers.
Software enables the trillions of components in that network to function in perfect harmony.
More than 3,000 telephone switching systems rely on Bell Labs software, and the reliability standards imposed on these systems are a thousand times more stringent than those for typical commercial computers. In addition, Bell Labs has created computerized support systems that automate, simplify and reduce the costs of hundreds of telephone company operations. Bell Labs also invented UNIX, one of the world's most popular computer operating systems, and in 1995 introduced a new operating system called Plan 9. Advanced computer technologies are also being used to create machines that recognize conversational human speech, and this technology is advancing rapidly because of developments in parallel processing and digital signal processor chips. Such systems can now understand limited speech, even over dialed-up telephone lines, and systems are being developed that can verbally translate from one language to another in real time.