China Telecom claims a ‘world's first’ hollow-core fibre demonstration

ZTE, Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Joint Stock Limited Company, and Huaxin Design Institute were also involved in the project, which was deployed over a transmission distance of 20km in the live network of something called the All-Optical Network Technology and Application in the Intelligent Computing Era seminar of the CCSA TC618/NGOF.

This demonstration connected a hollow-core fibre deployment and large-capacity transmission between China Telecom's Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center and Yiqiao IDC, we’re told.

ZTE optical transport equipment was used for project, alongside some improvements in spectral efficiency, baud rate optimization, and amplification optimization technologies. The system extends 41 C-band 1.2Tbitps and 64 L-band 800Gbitps wavelengths, and archives unidirectional transmission capacity of over 100Tbitps and a transmission distance of 20km in the field network, explains the release. 

It also hails ‘breakthroughs in hollow-core fibre fusion splicing technologies’, such as low-power discharge and mode field matching related to the demonstration.

"We have always maintained the leading position in the field of basic transmission networks,” said China Telecom's Zhejiang branch. “By undertaking the national key R&D project, we have demonstrated and verified the hollow-core fibre and 1.2Tbit/s transport system in the field network, and can offer detailed engineering data and demonstration applications. In the future, we will further cooperate with the industry to conduct research on a larger scope, and provide practical scenarios for the interconnection of distributed intelligent computing centres."

China Telecom will apparently expand the hollow-core optical cable environment and build a platform for the purpose of testing and verifying ‘new technologies and applications oriented towards intelligent computing scenarios.’