Boffins jack up broadband to terabit speeds

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications in Berlin in co-operation with Fujitsu Laboratories have succeeded in transferring data at 2.56 terabits per second over a 160km glass fibre link.

The demonstration exceeded the existing world record of 1.2 terabits per second over the same distance.

Such speeds could allow the transmission of approximately 60 DVDs in one second, or the entire contents of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in less than one minute.

The Fraunhofer Institute said that, despite setbacks in the telecoms industry in recent years, network traffic is increasing by more than 50 per cent per year.

"A corresponding upgrade of the network capacity, and thus a better utilisation of the optical fibre links, is mandatory in the future," said the Institute in a statement.

"In today's systems only a fraction of the almost inexhaustible bandwidth of optical fibre is exploited.

"One way towards a better exploitation is the increase of the data rates transported by one optical carrier wavelength in the optical fibre."

As well as the speed record, the Fraunhofer Institute also holds two distance records: data transmission at 1.28 terabits per second over a 240km glass fibre link; and data transmission of 160GB per second over a 4,000km glass fibre link.