Categories
broadband Engineer internet Net

BT achieves world record for fibre transmission rates – fair play @neilmcrae

BT world record broadband speed

Had an excited Neil Mcrae come up to me this morning  asking if I’d read the press release 🙂 Neil is Chief Technical Architect of BT Group. The conversation began over beer and a curry last night where Neil alluded to an important announcement the next day but declined to elaborate. Normally beer will loosen a person’s tongue but Neil doesn’t drink enough beer for this approach to work.

Next morning I had naturally forgotten all about it until prompted by the lad.

The press release, which you can read in full here, tells us that BT, in conjunction with vendor Alcatel Lucent, achieved “trial speeds of up to 1.4Tb/s with a record spectral efficiency of 5.7 bits per second per Hertz (b/s/Hz)on an existing core fiber connection. This is believed to be the fastest speed ever achieved in commercial grade hardware in a real-world environment and is equivalent to transmitting 44 uncompressed HD films in a single second.

This press release has been picked up by online media all over the world. After all 1.4Tbps is a pretty advanced performance for a fibre connection. In fact the connection made use of multiple fibre strands running off BT’s Alcatel Lucent 400Gbps capable kit. Multiple ports were used to get the speeds.

Not many companies have this kind of kit to play with but the development of advanced performance fibre transmission networks is key for large ISPs and content providers to be able to cope with the growth in consumer demand for internet services.

This particular trial majors on the efficiencies of the technology. It uses existing “old” fibre connecting BT’s Adastral Park R&D centre with BT Tower in London. This is important because it will allow bandwidth to grow using existing fibre in the ground.

BT are quoted as saying that a 1.4Tbps is the equivalent to transmitting 44 uncompressed HD films in a single second. Now I happen to know that Neil Mcrae is a big fan of the latest and greatest TVs – he is the only person I know to own a 4K TV (in fact he has a Sony 4K Ultra HD job). It’s all becoming clear.

There must be a 3rd node on the BT network with the Alcatel Lucent kit in Neil Mcrae’s back bedroom. He is going to have a Sony 4K TV in every room.  Seems obvious. 1.4Tbps is still a little overkill even with all these TVs but there is such a thing as future proofing you know. As 8K becomes available Neil will be able to upgrade his TVs without having to go to the hassle of changing his home router.

Respect:)

Meanwhile I think we can be proud that this kind of pioneering work is happening in the UK and I think Neil is right to have a smile on his face this morning. Onwards and upwards.