Deutsche Telekom has successfully tested a a 512Gbps transmission over a single optical-fiber wavelength channel over a distance of 734km. The transmission was sent from Berlin to Hanover and back and, while Deutsche Telekom says that higher speeds are possible in a laboratory, this real-world test “…corresponds to a usable bit rate of 400 Gbit/s, or the simultaneous transmission of 77 music CDs.”

“This tremendous transmission performance was reached using innovative transmission technology with two carrier frequencies, two polarization planes, 16-QAM quadrature amplitude modulation and digital offline signal processing for the equalization of fiber influences with soft-FEC forward error correction decoding in the receiver.”

Implementing these incredible speeds would not require a costly infrastructure revamp either.

“With the new method, existing networks can double their current transmission capacity by merely replacing the technology in the terminal stations.”

Source: Deutsche Telekom via Engadget