A broadband speed test conducted in London on existing fibre network by British Telecom and Alcatel-Lucent, a French networking equipment firm, achieved 1.4 terabits per second of transmission.
That speed would be the dream of movie downloaders since it is equal to 44 high-definition movies in just a second.
The trials aim to maximise the efficiency of current infrastructure and avoid very costly upgrades, said Ford Fadaghi, managing director of Telstye, a technology analysis firm. « It’s about reducing the cost of carrying vast amounts of data over the coming years, » he added.
To achieve that mega speed, the trial used a flexigrid infrastructure made up of seven 200 gigabits per second channels where data travel between two nodes on a network. When combined, it yielded a total capacity of 1.4 terabits a second,
By reducing the gaps between transmission channels, the channels’ density increased and it resulted in a 42.5 per cent boost in efficiency of data transmission compared with the current standard networks.
Kevin Drury, optical marketing leader of Alcatel-Lucent, compared the technique to cutting the space between lanes on a busy highway which would create more lanes for vehicles to travel on the same road.
The trials was held on a 410-kilometre fiber link between the BT tower in central London and the BT research campus in Ipswich in October and November with the aim of helping household and business demand for higher bandwidth.
CSIRO studies said faster transmission speed has other benefits other than the faster download of movies and videos. It could also boost access and productivity of healthcare, education and business.
The result of the trial were released on Thursday, just a week after SK Telecom, a mobile operator in Seoul, South Korea, announced plans to introduce a new 300Mbps service by the end of 2014.
ibtimes.com