Nokia and Megacable announced today that together they have achieved a Latin American speed record in long-distance optical transmission, having reached 1.1Tbps (Terabits per second) in a single-carrier wavelength transmission over a long-distance fiber network.

The trial was carried over one of Megacable’ s existing long-distance routes with challenging fiber conditions and maintained all actual required network margins to replicate a real-world deployment scenario. The milestone was achieved over 390km, with several intermediate ROADMs and no Raman amplifications. A previous test, run under similar conditions, demonstrated 900 Gbps in a single-carrier transmission over 600km. On both tests, the channel speeds were achieved without regeneration.

The tests are part of the actions that Megacable is taking to rapidly scale its network capacity and increase its long-distance data transmission speeds from 9.6Tb to 28.8Tb in a first phase using Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine-Vs (PSE-Vs) coherent optics, and up to 38.4Tb with the new PSE-6s in a second test phase that will interconnect all its data centers nationwide.

For the trial, Nokia deployed a next-generation optical transport solution, based on its sixth-generation super-coherent PSE-6s technology over its existing 1830 PSS optical transport platform, running live traffic without any impact to the network.

Nokia’s PSE-6s is the industry's most advanced digital coherent optics (DCO) technology, powering the latest generation of high-performance, high-capacity Nokia transponders, packet optical switches and disaggregated compact modular and subsea terminal platforms. The Nokia PSE-6s is the first platform that can support up to 1.2Tb/s in metro applications, and 800Gbps transmission over long-haul distances.

Having a next-generation optical transport network allows cutting-edge operators like Megacable to provide the high-speed, low-latency, high-quality ultra-broadband connectivity that is essential for business customers and is also necessary to support accelerated growth in residential users. Additionally, Megacable will benefit from lower energy consumption in the network and a lower operating cost per bit. It is expected that new 5nm PSE-6s will provide 45% less power consumption.

Miguel Sol, Chief Technology Officer at Megacable, said: “We selected Nokia for this trial to prove our network evolution, since our first deployment with Nokia was 9.6 Tbps of total capacity.   As part of our technology innovation and evolution program, we agreed with Nokia to set and the transport routes to perform the trial of their new PSE-6s chipset. It will allow us to increase optical spectrum efficiency, enabling capacities up to 38.4Tbps, as well as cost and power consumption efficiencies over our Optical Long Haul fiber network.  Those are the key aspects that we evaluate to cover the requirements of all markets to which Megacable provides connectivity, especially for Fiber High-speed connectivity, dedicated Enterprise links and Carriers-to-Carrier services. The new PSE-6s coherent optics, will allow Megacable to do a fast deployment of ultra-high-capacity wavelengths on the most high-demand routes of our network, and deliver the best connectivity for our customers in Mexico.”

Felipe Leão, Head of Optical Networks for Latin America at Nokia, said: “Nokia is very pleased with the performance of the PSE-6s in the trial. The results show that Nokia's Optical Network solutions continue to evolve to enable innovative customers like Megacable to easily scale networks, reduce cost/bit and to offer new services in the market. Being able to deploy the latest technology seamlesslythe existing network proves Nokia’s commitment to build a scalable and future-proof network. We are honored to have been selected by Megacable as a key partner for their Optical network.”

Nokia is one of the world leaders in optical networks, with products and solutions that enable rapid scale, starting at the edge of the network and moving through transport, core, and underwater networks. Through greater intelligence and automation, Nokia optical networks simplify operation and reduce costs, creating greater value for telecom operators.