The idea of fiber optic communications was first recorded in 1880, when Alexander Graham Bell patented an optical telephone system, which he called the Photophone. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that General Telephone and Electronics and subsequently Bell Labs deployed fiber optic systems that carried nearly 700 voice telephone calls at a blazing 6 Mbps.
Today, more than 80 percent of voice traffic travels over fiber optics and top speeds range from a gig for homes up to 100 Gigabit Ethernet. But new technology will quadruple those speeds, according to Luminosity.
Lumenisity is trialing a new type of optical fiber with a hollow center, known as CoreSmart with Ciena, which supports a reach of more than 620 miles for 400Gbps wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transmission in a recirculating loop. It will demonstrate the potential of the technology across multiple applications for higher bandwidth and longer reach latency-sensitive applications such as data center interconnects, as well as edge compute and 5G backhaul.
British Telecom (BT) has also begun trials of the hollow core fiber – at the BT Labs in Adastral Park, Ipswich, United Kingdom, using a 6.2 mile-long cable to examine use in 5G networks and ultra-secure communications, such as Quantum Key Distribution.
The cable solutions from Lumenisity, known as CoreSmart® and Hollowcore TradeSmart®, increase speeds by 50 percent and reduce latency by 30 percent, according to Lumenisity.
Although the glass in today’s fiber-optic cables quickly carries information over long distances by channeling light from laser transmitters through glass strands, light travels slower inside the fiber than it does through the air. Therefore, the experimental fiber has an air-filled central core, with an outer ring of glass, to guide the laser beam, while maintaining the signal speed at close to the ultimate speed of light.
“The reduction in the delay of the light provided by hollow core fiber would enable a variety of benefits, from high-frequency trading to lowering mobile network costs,” a company press release said. “Working with Mavenir, BT has shown that using hollow core fiber can increase the distance between street antennas and the back-end processing in exchanges.”
Hollow-core fiber could potentially reduce costs by allowing more 5G antennas to be served from one exchange or cabinet, according to BT.
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