BT and Alcatel-Lucent Record Real-World Fibre Optic Speed of 1.4Tbps In the UK

Mark.JUK writes "The United Kingdom's national telecoms operator, BT, has successfully teamed up with Alcatel-Lucent to conduct a field trial that delivered real-world data speeds of 1.4 Terabits per second over an existing commercial-grade 410km fiber optic link. The trial used a 'record spectral efficiency' of 5.7 bits per second per Hertz and Flexgrid technology to vary the gaps between transmission channels for 42.5% greater data transmission efficiency than today's standard networks. The speed was achieved by overlaying an 'Alien Super Channel' (i.e. it operates transparently on top of BT's existing optical network), which bundled together 7 x 200Gbps (Gigabits per second) channels and then reduced the 'spectral spacing' between the channels from 50GHz to 35GHz using the 400Gb/s Photonic Services Engine (PSE) technology on the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS). It's hoped that this could help boost capacity to those who need it without needing to lay expensive new fiber cables."

Comments

Storage capacity

[StripedCow]

real-world data speeds of 1.4 Terabits per second over an existing commercial-grade 410km fiber optic link.

Meaning the link can store only 1.4 Tb/s * 410km / c = 239 MB. (Where c is the speed of light in the fiber link).

Bah, that's nothing.

Re:DSL..

[necro81]

Fiber doesn't generally have that same kind of problems (unless you foolishly installed cheap plastic optical fibers.) There isn't a special "greased lightning fiber" people can turn to that carries more data.

Speak for yourself - I just picked up a $5000 S/PDIF cable from Monster Cable that moves those bits so much faster than any other cable on the market. When you hear the results, you can just tell that the 1's and 0's have so much more definition and crispness than ordinary commodity cables.