MTN South Africa has conducted a trial of what it’s describing as the “fastest and most intelligent” optical network, offering the company speeds on its fibre backbone of up to 2,4Tbit/s using wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), technology that pushes multiple signals over a single fibre strand using different wavelengths or colours of laser light.
The trial, which was done with technology supplier Huawei, took place on MTN’s national fibre network. In a first scenario, it was able to transmit data at 2,4Tbit/s over a distance of 300km. In a second, it achieved 2Tbit/s over a distance of 1 031km.
“The success of this trial demonstrates the advanced optical transport system with bandwidth capacities far beyond the existing 100G technology,” MTN said.
The trial also looked at the technology’s ability to be “IT-like”, with features such as bandwidth on demand tested.
MTN did not say when it plans to deploy the technology commercially. — (c) 2014 NewsCentral Media