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"but electricity is ~66% of speed of light"

According to Wikipedia, it depends on the insulation:

== SNIP ==

Propagation speed is affected by insulation, so that in an unshielded copper conductor ranges 95 to 97% that of the speed of light, while in a typical coaxial cable it is about 66% of the speed of light.

== SNIP ==

For LMR-400 (a very common cable for Ham Radio) - the Velocity Factor is about 85% according to http://www.febo.com/reference/cable_data.html

The net-net is, that there are opportunities to get closer to the speed of light if latency is really, really important.



At data rates, transmission lines are used in copper. This is why CAT-5e has higher requirements on the twisted pairs than CAT-3 (or plain old phone line).

66% turns out to be a surprisingly consistent approximation for both copper and fiber.




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