Fun fact: large transmission lines use power line carrier communications for things like remedial action schemes and other system protection functionality (e.g. protective relay trip signals). The carrier can be a few hundred kV, so it tends to be outside the comfort zone of most casual experimenters.
Photons vs electrons? Just rotate 90 degrees, seem to be swappable more easily than using neutrons or other particles, like tau/muon/electron neutrinos.
Oh wait, didn't fermilab even use neutrinos in 2012? That seems even harder, practically made for an April fools RFC.
Most IP over Lasers these days is Ethernet (although certainly other standards exist) 802.3ae covers a lot of 10G laser based ethernet over fiber for example.