Orange Poland and Nokia said they have achieved the world’s first optical transmission of 250 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) per wavelength in a field trial over 870km through Orange Poland’s existing network infrastructure between Warsaw and Wroclaw over standard single mode fiber.
The trial demonstrates how Orange Poland can stay ahead of surging bandwidth demand as cloud networking continues to grow.
Nokia said that the milestone was reached when a six-carrier 1.5 Terabits per second (Tb/s) superchannel occupying a bandwidth of 300GHz was transmitted. The new optical link could transmit up to 24Tb/s of traffic in total if 96 channels amplifiers were used. Nokia claims that with an electrical speed that is 30% faster than current technology, the capacity is maximized while the channel spacing remains aligned with the 50 GHz ITU-T grid.
Nokia said that optical systems typically achieve maximum transmission capacity over short distances and lower capacity across long distances.
Christian Gacon, Vice President in charge of Orange’s Transport Networks
Bandwidth demands are continuing to skyrocket, but we also need to keep our infrastructure costs in check. Reaching these new heights in optical transmission proves we can meet bandwidth demand while maintaining the lowest cost per bit so our business can continue to flourish.
Sam Bucci, Head of Nokia’s Optical business
Our recently announced photonic engine, the PSE2, and our 500G muxponder, in combination with Orange’s talented engineers and rock solid network infrastructure, made this technical feat possible. We’re proud of this accomplishment and look forward to more innovation as the telco cloud network takes hold.
