Thanks to the proliferation of streaming services like Netflix, having a reliable ISP capable of delivering high download speeds is more important than ever before. That being the case, it’s not at all surprising that ISPs are continuously duking it out with each other in an ongoing race to determine who can offer users the fastest transfer speeds with minimal downtime.
Today, some of the fastest Internet service around comes from services like Google Fiber and Verizon FIOS. But now comes word via ZDNet that we may have a new data transfer champion in our midsts. According to the report, Nokia later this week will demonstrate a new transfer technology capable of delivering a jaw-dropping one terabit of data per second (equivalent to 1,000 Gbps) via optical fiber. The technology is the result of joint research carried out by Nokia Bell Labs, the Technical University of Munich and Telekom Innovation Laboratories.
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As a point of reference, that type of transfer speed would enable a user to download HBO’s entire Game of Thrones series in just over a second.
Notably, Nokia makes a point of noting that it was able to achieve 1 terabit data transfers in a real world setting as opposed to similar research takes place exclusively in controlled testing environments.
Nokia Bell Labs, which came to Nokia via its Alcatel Lucent acquisition last year, says its optical breakthrough will allow operators and enterprises to improve the distance and capacity of high-speed data transmissions in optical metro and core networks.
“The trial of the novel modulation approach, known as Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS), uses quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats to achieve higher transmission capacity over a given channel to significantly improve the spectral efficiency of optical communications,” Nokia explains.
Nokia further adds that its PCS technology results in signal transmissions that “are more resilient to noise and other impairments.
While there’s no telling when this technology will actually roll out to end users or corporations, it does a provide us with a glimpse into what the future may very well look like.
It’s crazy to think, but we may not be that far off from a future when we look back at Google Fiber the same way that we know look back at old school DSL.
