The two companies trialled speeds of up to 1.4Tbps with a record spectral efficiency of 5.7bps per Hertz; the equivalent of transmitting 44 uncompressed HD films in a single second.
The trial was conducted over an existing fibre link from the BT tower in London, UK, to the company’s Adastral Park research campus in Suffolk and used Flexigrid infrastructure to vary the gaps between the transmission channels.
Increasing the density of channels on the fibre achieved an estimated 4.25% higher data transmission rate compared to existing networks and BT hopes it could reduce the amount of fibre that will need to be laid as bandwidth demands increase.
Neil McRae, chief network architect at BT, said: “Investing for the future is core to BT’s strategy and this outstanding achievement demonstrates that BT can easily introduce new features and technologies across our core network, maximising the efficiency of our existing infrastructure.”
Cormac Whelan, CEO of the French vendor’s UK and Ireland unit, said that today’s agreement marks another milestone in the evolution of fibre.
“As part of our longstanding relationship, BT and Alcatel-Lucent continue to work together to use innovation from Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent and BT Research and Development to move the industry forward and meet the ever-evolving needs of the marketplace,” Whelan added.
