Already, as the post-war baby-boomers reach their 50s, Japan's lifetime-employers are carrying the cost of paying their senior workers over the odds in return for all the wages they forwent two or three decades ago.

ECONOMIST: Social conventions and demography add to the sclerosis

Such techniques have pushed the cost of carrying traffic on fiber down to about 1% of what it would cost on all-electronic equipment, and it will keep falling.

FORBES: Hooked on photonics