The world record for broadband speed has been achieved between London and Ipswich as BT clocks a download speed of 1.4 terabytes per second (TBp/s).
The world record has beaten the previous record of 100GB by a team in Germany tenfold.
The field trial, conducted over an existing fibre link between the BT Tower in London and BT’s Adastral Park research campus in Suffolk, used a new flexigrid infrastructure to vary the gaps between transmission channels, usually set at 50GHz.
An ‘alien super channel’ was overlaid across 410km between the two locations. That alien super channel contained seven 200GBp/s channels bundled together to provide the speed which would be capable of downloading dozens of HD films or thousands of albums in one second.
By increasing the density of channels on the fibre, this approach achieved up to 42.5pc greater data transmission efficiency compared to today’s standard networks.
Rapid technological growth
Speaking about the achievement, Dr Tim Whitley, BT’s MD of Research and Innovation said: “BT has a long history of leading innovation in telecommunications, from the earliest days of the electric telegraph to today’s global fibre networks.
“These trials continue that tradition, as we work with Alcatel-Lucent to push the boundaries of fibre technology, allowing us to support the ever increasing bandwidth required by our customers, and deliver new and exciting services which rely on fast, data-hungry applications.”
In the meantime, communications companies across the world are continuing to push broadband speeds further each year. South Korean company SK Telecom, for example, is preparing to showcase its 450Mbps ‘ultra 4G’ connection at next month’s World Mobile Congress.
Broadband speed image via Shutterstock
