Internet with Record PON Speed of 100Gbps? Vodafone and Nokia Come Together to Create New High-Speed Network

Nokia and Vodafone announced a new milestone in their collaboration to develop high-speed data technologies: the companies set a PON throughput record using a single wavelength. PON, or Passive Optical Network, is a passive optical network technology. The most advanced systems with this architecture currently provide data transfer rates up to 10 Gbps at a single wavelength.

New technology is being developed for broadband networks with speeds that can reach 100 Gbps. The promise is left by Vodafone and Nokia, who decided to join together to improve the communication conditions of citizens and companies, both in fiber and cable services.

Nokia and Vodafone specialists managed to increase this indicator by an order of magnitude, bringing it to 100 Gbps. The tests were carried out at the Vodafone Eschborn laboratory in Germany.

It is noted that Nokia Bell Labs employees used 25G optical equipment at a relatively low cost. It was possible to show the record throughput due to the use of innovative digital signal processing (DSP) tools.

Cited by the newspaper CincoDías, Vodafone guarantees that the new network will be 10 times faster than the structures that currently exist, facilitating the implementation of immersive services, for example. The aim will also be to ensure that the operator's customers are never left without an internet connection.

The technology has already been tested in Vodafone's Eschborn laboratory in Germany, with the help of Passive Optical Network (PON) equipment. It is, according to the company, a fiber network that connects key structures, such as communication towers, schools, factories, hospitals or companies, to the internet.

Also on the table is its use for calls via holograms or other features made possible by 5G. Teleportation is another of the paths pointed out by Vodafone: "At a speed of 100 Gbps, researchers can imagine futuristic virtual teleportation applications."

But what, after all, is 100 Gbps? This speed is equivalent, for example, to the transmission of four thousand ultra high definition videos simultaneously, without failures or delays. However, the novelty should still take time to be available: Vodafone and Nokia point only to the end of this decade.

The tested prototype of the system is the world's first application of variable speed data transmission on a PON network. It is noted that the commercial introduction of 50G PON and 100G PON networks will become possible after the adaptation of proven DSP tools - in the second half of this decade.