Frank,
You're right. In the most basic sense, light on a fiber optic strand has a greater (much greater) bandwidth than voltage and current on a unshielded twisted pair (UTP) of CAT5e or "CAT6" copper conductors.
How much greater is roughly indicated the cycles per second of the light verses the maximum cycles per second of the wire. On Wire, electrical frequency can go up to 200 to 300 million cycles per second before being distorted beyond recognition by the wire's total impedance. Light's frequency is roughly a MILLION times greater than the frequency of the electricity in common UTP.
The way that information is changed into a signal in the electricity or light is in different stages of development, UTP vs. fiber, as is the hardware that modulates the electricity or light, so the million-fold difference above may be less or greater depending on the individual schemes compared. But basically, fiber is a fat pipe for information compared with UTP.
Al
