BT Claims New Speed Record on Live Core Network

BT this week claimed a new speed record for a live core network, after reaching 2 Tbps on a 700 km link between London and Dublin.

 

In another test, BT said it reached 5.6 Tbps over a single optical fibre running on its trial network between its lab in Adastral Park and the BT Tower in London. At that speed, someone could download 200 high-definition films per second.

 

"It's important that our core networks keep pace with the growth in bandwidth demands driven by take-up of high-speed fibre broadband, HD content, 4G smartphones and tablets and in the future, 5G services," said Howard Watson, CEO of BT technology, services and operations, in a statement on Wednesday.

 

"So we're investing in our core, as well as in high-speed access technology such as fibre broadband, to make sure there is no capacity crunch and [to] deliver the best possible speeds to customers," he said.

 

To reach these data-rates, the U.K. incumbent and kit maker Huawei used Terabit superchannels – which use more of the available capacity on a single optical fibre – and flexible grid technology – a method of dynamically allocating optical spectrum for each data channel, as opposed to a fixed allocation method.

 

The significance of these trials is that they did not require BT to lay additional cables, which would have increased deployment costs substantially.

 

"These landmark trials show that we can easily turn up the dial to deliver the speeds needed in our core networks to stay well head of riding customer demand," Watson said.