Alcatel of Paris has demonstrated 5.12-Tb/s transmission over 300 km of its TeraLight optical fiber. Such a transmission capacity would enable more than 100 million voice calls or 640,000 high-speed Internet connections to be carried over a single fiber.
The company's researchers employed its 40-Gb/s dense wavelength division multiplexing systems in the unidirectional test, which reached 128-channel transmission. Alcatel hopes to double that capacity for future commercial deployment.