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BT Ireland has achieved speeds of 1.2Tbps in a Dublin trial, with plans to launch a commercial network next year.
Following its successful international trial of 400Gbps speeds between Ireland and London, BT Ireland has achieved speeds three times more than that in its latest test, but over a much shorter distance.
It revealed that in a Dublin cross-city trial it clocked in speeds of 1.2Tbps in collaboration with BT colleagues from the UK across a single-port interface which, BT Ireland said, was a very efficient method of transporting data. For its customers, it means that all of their data centre connections could, in time, be delivered on a single port at the data centre, giving them ultra-high bandwidth access.
‘It’s absolutely vital that we trial innovation in real-world environments, and the teams have very much brought the theory to life’
– DR KATIE BROWN
“It is always very exciting and encouraging to see innovative cutting-edge technology trials conclude successfully,” said Paul Hackett, BT Ireland’s head of network design and core capacity.
“It is especially pleasing to see this 1.2Tb innovation come so quickly on the back of our 400Gbps trials earlier this year.”
At such speeds, Hackett said, it could deliver more than 40,000 ultra-HD video streams simultaneously on a single port or 400 one-hour episodes delivered in a second.
Dr Katie Brown, BT’s connectivity director, added: “It’s absolutely vital that we trial innovation in real-world environments, and the teams have very much brought the theory to life.”
The successful trial will now see the full commercial deployment of the technology in late 2020.
Last month, the Horizon 2020-funded consortium Teriphic announced that it is developing new optical transceiver modules used in internet data centres. This will aim to reduce power consumption by 50pc per gigabit per second and, in turn, produce less carbon emissions.
In a statement, the group said: “Shortening processing intervals for high-performance computing, edge computing and machine learning, the new ultra-high-capacity, low-power consumption pluggable modules are capable of both 800Gbps and 1.6Tbps.”
