I guess the article is optimistic in that sense. If you can engineer fiber that's 74% of c, or better yet, bore one of your mirror holes directly through the center of the earth, between nyc and shanghai, or something even crazier, you can make a lot of money.
If you have the capability to bore a hole through the center of the earth, you would be so much more advanced than the current state of the art, that our puny earthling money wouldn't buy you anything you couldn't get in easier ways.
I was just wondering if hair thin, hollow, reflective tubes could be made cheap enough for oceanic data cables. It would obviously be more expensive than regular fiber.
And the advantage wouldn't be that big. Especially compared to co-locating.
You can't colocate at two stock exchanges at once, which is required to make use of the arbitrage opportunities the article talks about.
Ah, ok.
Light slows down in waveguides too. A heuristic explanation is that as it travels down the guide, it's also bouncing off the sides, and so effectively going at an angle.
The maximum signal speed loss due to inclination would be sqrt(1+(1/refraction_index^2))-1, or around 20% for fiber described above. Although, in practice, the fiber would not be even close to its maximum angle.
But potentially, a lower refraction index fiber with a reflective coating would allow signals to travel faster.