A high‐speed fiber optic transceiver using 650 nm resonant‐cavity light‐emitting diode (RC‐LED) and silicon pin photodiode for polymer optical fiber (POF) systems is presented. The transmitter exploits peaking and carrier sweep‐out effects to improve on‐off keying modulation rate of 100 MHz bandwidth RC‐LEDs by over 250%. An error‐free data transmission over 50 m graded‐index POF is demonstrated at 500 Mbit/s data rate. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:826–830, 2015