Alcatel-Lucent and Canadian operator Shaw Communications have claimed a North American first with a field trial of 400Gbps data transmission over an existing optical link carrying live network traffic. The trial ran over a 400km route between Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, using Shaw’s current high-capacity transport network, designed for speeds up to 100Gbps. Using Alcatel-Lucent’s 400Gbps technology, the trial demonstrated the ability of an existing optical network carrying up to 17.6Tbps – equivalent to 266 million voice calls or the transmission of 88 Blu-ray discs in one second (transmission of roughly double the previous level of data over an existing 100Gbps coherent network).