New Fiber Optics Tech Smashes Data Rate Record

A team of researchers in Japan and the United Kingdom have smashed the world record for fiber optic communications through commercial-grade fiber. By broadening fiber’s communication bandwidth, the team has produced data rates four times as fast as existing commercial systems—and 33 percent better than the previous world record. The researchers’ success derives in part from their innovative use of optical amplifiers to boost signals across communications bands that conventional fiber optics technology today less-frequently uses. The researchers have built their communications hardware stack from optical amplifiers and other equipment developed, in part, by Nokia Bell Labs and the Hong Kong-based company Amonics. The assembled tech comprises six separate optical amplifiers that can squeeze optical signals through C-band wavelengths—the standard, workhorse communications band today—plus the less-popular L-, S-, and E-bands. All together, the combination of E, S, C, and L bands enables the new technology to push a staggering 402 terabits per second (Tbps) through the kinds of fiber optic cables that are already in the ground and underneath the oceans.