James Delahunty
7 Mar 2012 22:23
Deutsche Telekom sets new world record.
The German telecommunications giant announced that it achieved a usable bit rate of 400Gbps over a single channel of its fibre optic network. Each optical fibre can carry up to 48 channels, adding up to a potential throughput of 24.67Tbps.
The experiment - which transmitted data between Berlin and Hannover and then back again (734km) - achieved a maximum of 512Gbps. Reducing the data needed for error correction, Deutsche Telekom reported 400Gbps of usable data.
The previous record was set last year by researchers in the United States and Canada, and it achieved 186Gbps.
Much of the speed gained, according to Deutsche Telekom, was due to improvements to the software used for forward error correction. It said the improvements can now be made without having to dig up fibre optic lines and lay new cables.
"Whenever we can do something where the biggest part of the infrastructure remains untouched, it means great progress becomes possible," Deutsche Telekom's T-Labs manager Heinrich Arnold told BBC News.