BT and Huawei reach 3Tbps in field trial
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BT and Huawei reach 3Tbps in field trial

The UK’s BT and Chinese vendor Huawei have reached up to 3Tbps in field trials, thought to be the fastest real-time super channel speeds ever achieved over an existing fibre link in a real-world environment.

The two companies used commercial hardware and software during the trial, which was conducted over a 359km fibre field link between BT’s Adastral Park research campus in Suffolk and the BT Tower in London.

Huawei implemented its OSN and iManager platform over advanced Flexigrid infrastructure to reach speeds equal to the transmission of approximately 100 uncompressed HD films in one second.

“Flexigrid technology is evolving quickly, and this trial has been invaluable in demonstrating the feasibility of this emerging technology in a real, truly testing environment,” said Neil McRae, chief network architect at BT.

“Combined with BT’s continuing investment in its network infrastructure, this outstanding breakthrough suggests we’re well-prepared for a future where new and exciting services are delivered by faster, more data-hungry applications.”

McRae said that the trial also demonstrated BT’s ability to maximise the efficiency of its existing investments and extend the life of its core network to meet the demands of the 21st century digital society.

Huawei and BT share a longstanding relationship and last month, the vendor committed to investing more than $4 billion in fixed-broadband technology R&D over the next three years.

“We are living in a data-led world where the need to transmit data at ever-increasing speeds is vital,” said Zha Jun, president of Huawei’s fixed network business unit.

“One of the strengths of our 10-year partnership with BT is our collaboration in developing and implementing technical solutions that more efficiently use BT’s existing infrastructure and today’s announcement exemplifies our commitment to innovation.”

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