Alcatel-Lucent and Telefónica in Spain have successfully completed a trial that sent a mixture of 100Gbps, 200Gbps and 400Gbps data links over a single fiber pair.
The need for operators to upgrade their mobile networks to handle growing data volumes is getting a lot of attention, but growing consumption of, for example, streaming video is affecting their whole network infrastructures, and in the core parts data links at 400Gbps will help meet the increasing demands.
The use of the speed is still in its infancy, but vendors are taking small steps in the right direction. The field trial Alcatel-Lucent conducted with Telefónica was the first to mix and match links or wavelengths running at 100Gbps, 200Gbps and 400Gbps on a live network using WDM (wavelength-division multiplexing) technology. The distance was up to about 650 kilometers.
To perform the trial, Telefónica’s network in Catalonia, Spain, was outfitted with Alcatel-Lucent’s new 400G adaptive-modulation transponder and the ROADM (reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer) integrated in the vendor’s 1830 Photonic Service Switch.
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