Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications (Berlin, Germany) and Fujitsu have successfully transmitted data at the remarkable rate of 2.56 Terabits per second (Tb/s) over a 160 km long fiber optic link. The previous highest transmission rate was 1.2 Tb/s.
This speed of 2.56 Tb/s is equivalent to downloading 60 DVDs in just one second or the entire Britannica Encyclopedia in under a minute.
According to the Fraunhofer Institute, although the telecommunications industry appears to be declining in recent years, the volume of information transmitted across these networks continues to increase by over 50% annually. “This necessitates the need to upgrade network capacity and underscores the importance of fiber optics for the future. In current systems, only a small fraction of the nearly limitless bandwidth of fiber optics is being utilized,” stated Fraunhofer.
In addition to the above speed, Fraunhofer’s scientists have also achieved two other records: a data transmission speed of 1.28 Tb/s over a 240 km fiber optic cable and 160 Gb/s over a line measuring 4,000 km.
