Nokia and OTE claim long-distance fibre speed records

Specifically, in a field trial apparently covering every inch of Greece, the two companies used OTE’s national dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) network and Nokia’s 1830 PSI-M optical transport solution to connect IP Core data centres and routers. They claim to have managed 800Gbps on a single channel over 2580 km and 900Gbps over 1290 km, which are apparently new records.

“We are proud to have developed, constructed and operate one of the most advanced long-haul backbone DWDM networks globally,” said Michalis Papamichail, OTE Group Technology Strategy Director. “This network has demonstrated world-record performances, as evidenced by our recent field trial. Our aim is to deliver top tier performance in the most cost-effective manner. In collaboration with our partner, Nokia, we look forward to further advancements in our DWDM technology."

“It's incredibly gratifying to achieve these dual world records in collaboration with our longstanding customer, OTE, who is helping to strengthen the Greek economy through its advanced network infrastructure,” said James Watt, GM of Nokia’s optical business. “Together, we are contributing to a global legacy that elevates data transmission capabilities to meet the surging demands of social media, cloud computing, and video streaming.”

We’re told two optical nodes were installed in Patra and Athens, which boosted performance PSE-6s coherent optics. Assuming they mean Patras, Google says they’re only a couple of hundred kilometres apart, so it’s not clear how they covered the distances stated. They also demonstrated 1.2 Tbps transmission on a single channel over 255 km.

While Watt was careful to point the spotlight at OTE, the ultimate purpose of this field trial was to show off Nokia’s sixth generation of super-coherent Photonic Service Engines (PSE-6s). Again, however, it’s not obvious how much this trial improved on previous ones in Japan and the Atlantic Ocean.