"In both cases you're detecting changes in energy, and that's how you encode data.
"With copper wires you're looking at changes in the electromagnetic field, the intensity of that field and perhaps the phase of the wave being sent down a wire.
"With fibre optics, a transmitter converts electronic information into pulses of light — a pulse equates to a one, while no pulse is zero. When the signal reaches the other end, an optical receiver converts the light signal back into electronic information," explains Malaney.
The throughput of the data is determined by the frequency range that a cable will carry — the higher the frequency range, the greater the bandwidth and the more data that can be put through per unit time.
And this is the key difference — fibre optic cables have much higher bandwidths than copper cables.
"Optical fibre can carry much higher frequency ranges — note that light is a very high frequency signal — while copper wire attenuates or loses signal strength at higher frequencies," says Malaney.
Also, fibre optic technology is far less susceptible to noise and electromagnetic interference than electricity along a copper wire.
"You can send the signal for over 200 kilometres without any real loss of quality while a copper cable signal suffers a lot of degradation over that distance," says Malaney.