Carrier transport effects of various kinds provide an important performance limitation to InP-based semiconductor lasers, modulators, and optical switching devices. We demonstrate how thermally activated tunneling dominates the hole transport in InGaAs/InGaAsP/InP optical switching structures. For InGaAs/InGaAlAs quantum well lasers, we show that a carrier culture time into the quantum wells of about 1.5 ps severely Limits the modulation performance.