A low noise multimode VCSEL (300) which can be used to transmit data reliably on multimode optical media at data rates up to and exceeding 1 gigabit per second with bit error rates less than 1 x 10 -9 errors/bit, has a conventional multimode laser structure where optimal mirror reflectivity is increased to a point where the output power is less than half the maximum output power. Preferably, the reflectivity of the first and second mirror regions (302,308) of the multimode laser is high, typically greater than 99.5%.