Alcatel-Lucent sees ‘major breakthrough’ in tech for 1,000Tbps speeds

Alcatel-Lucent sees ‘major breakthrough’ in tech for 1,000Tbps speeds

The company’s research arm is striving towards 1-petabit-per-second speeds over fibre in time for the arrival of 5G in 2020.

Alcatel-Lucent’s research arm, Bell Labs, has announced that ongoing testing of its prototype real-time space-division multiplexed optical multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO-SDM) system could see the company attain speeds of 1 petabit per second in time for the arrival of 5G and the Internet of Things.

“This experiment represents a major breakthrough in the development of future optical transport,” Marcus Weldon, CTO of Alcatel-Lucent and president of Bell Labs, said.

“We are at the crossroads of a huge change in communications networks, with the advent of 5G wireless and cloud networking under way. Operators and enterprises alike will see their networks challenged by massive increases in traffic. At Bell Labs, we are continuously innovating to shape the future of communications networks to meet those demands.”

The successful experiment used six transmitters and six receivers alongside real-time digital signal processing over coupled fibre stretching 60km in Bell Labs’ global headquarters

The arrival of 5G in 2020 will bring with it a need for petabit-per-second speeds, the company said, with demand to outstrip current capacity. Bell Labs’ MIMO-SDM technology could see today’s 10Tbps to 20Tbps increase to 1 petabit per second — the equivalent of 1,000Tbps.

Last month, Alcatel-Lucent announced a trial of its G.fast fibre-to-the-basement technology in partnership with the company rolling out Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), attaining throughput speeds of 800Mbps.

G.fast, used to provide high-speed broadband on networks that stop short of rolling fibre all the way to the premises is the next iteration of DSL after ADSL and VDSL.

By Corinne Reichert | November 20, 2015 — 01:16 GMT (17:16 PST