SaskTel and Alca-Lu trial 400G over network originally built for 10G

French-US vendor Alcatel-Lucent and Canadian regional full-service telco SaskTel have successful trialled fibre-optic data transmission enabling the delivery of data at speeds of up to 400Gbps over a network originally built for 10Gbps traffic. The trial took place on a live network between Regina, the provincial capital of Saskatchewan, and Saskatoon more than 250km away. The trial could lead to the commercial deployment of the Alcatel-Lucent technology, allowing SaskTel to meet increasing demand for broadband access by offering an immediate upgrade to 100G transmission, moving to 400G in the future as and when needed, the vendor’s press release said.