All those millions of miles of fiber optic cable all over the world are carrying laser light...

Whats new is overcoming the obstacles to using the lasers to transmit through free-space to communicate over orbital, lunar, and interplanetary distances.

The %100 success of the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration showed those hurdles could be surmounted. 622Mbps were transmitted from the moon to the ground terminal using a Laser beam ~0.5Watts in power from a transmitter 10cm in diameter.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/12/09/mit-lincoln-laboratory-builds-broadband-for-moon/J8Gi8MyllWNvR3InBIuZlM/story.html
For comparison LRO had a 75cm transmitter dish, over 40W transmitted power, and could only do ~100Mbps...

The article is about leveraging the billions of dollars invested by industry to miniaturize these transmitters and receivers by a lot to minimize the size weight and power even further.