Fiber optic field trial: Up to 28.8 terabits/s in the future?

There is no question that fiber optics will be the future standard when it comes to expanding the Internet. Now it has been demonstrated that the modern cables can provide far faster Internet than they do at present. In a field test, it has now been possible to send a remarkable 600 Gbit/s over a distance of 781 km – And that over just one color.

Up to 28.8 terabits per second possible

The mastermind behind the experiment was not only the well-known telecommunications company Nokia. It was joined at its side by the network operator GlobalConnect. Together they managed the 600 Gbit/s mentioned at the beginning. To the layman, this may already sound like fast Internet. But when you consider that the whole thing took place on just one wavelength and covered a distance of 781 km, the implications are much greater. If you convert the whole thing to classic fiber optic technology, 28.8 terabits/s would be possible in this way, at least theoretically.

The results seem particularly impressive when one considers the values of the predecessor technology. The distance in particular was clearly surpassed in a direct comparison. For example, “PSE-3” was able to maintain a speed of 600 Gbit/s for just about 200 km. Over a distance of 2,500 km, the speed was already only 200 Gbit/s. For comparison: in the current field test, the “speed minimum” of 200 Gbit/s had been reached after a remarkable 10,000 km.

“Wavelength Division Multiplexing” is the future

The cooperation between Nokia and GlobalConnect used the so-called “Wavelength Division Multiplexing” (WDM). In this process, a total of 48 colors are combined on just a single fiber. In view of the impressive results, it will now only be a matter of time before the successful field trial is also used in practice. As is so often the case in the telecommunications sector, Northern Europe is to be the pioneer. The fiber-optic networks there are to be given a suitable update. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we in Germany benefit from this.