Multimode fiber links suffer from intermodal dispersion, which, at high data rates, produces intersymbol interference in the received optical signal. Without signal processing or equalization, this limits the achievable data rates. We consider the combination of a spatially resolved equalizer (SRE) (in the optical domain) and forward error correction (FEC) to increase the achievable data rates and reliability on these links. Our performance results obtained with actual measured impulse responses show that SRE and FEC on a multimode fiber link enable a significant increase (about 2.5 times) in data rate and/or a reduction in bit error rate (BER) at relatively low cost. Furthermore, we show that improvements in data rate and reliability are generally not possible using FEC alone, making the SRE/FEC combination a cost-effective, attractive approach.