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Yeah, why not?

They could have also looped their own line so that the effective length was longer. But I'm not really sure how they do it.

it's a kind of tortilla chip.

The optical fibers are lines owned by companies, and they can be connected with different TX/RX equipment on each end, I think.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Gigabit+ethernet

I thought optical broadband was done years ago.