T-Mobile's German Parent Unveils World's Fast Fiber Routing -- 512 Gbps

From DailyTech: There are two major determinants of cellular data network speeds. The first is the physical broadcast infrastructure, which takes into account factors such as number of towers, placement, type of spectrum, and amount of spectrum available. The second major determinant is the physical network backbone -- typically fiber cable.

Every signal that goes to or from your smartphone must be routed through a fiber backbone. The faster that backbone is, the faster a carrier's services become, regardless of wireless transmission technology.

The "T-Labs" research group of T-Mobile USA's German parent Deutsche Telekom AG (ETR:DTE) made a splash this week, announcing [press release] that it had worked the kinks out of ultra fast fiber optic transmission, which travel at a theoretical data transfer speed of 512 Gbps (or "the simultaneous transmission of 77 music CDs" as T-Labs puts it).

Real world performance isn't far behind. Deutsche Telekom observed real world speeds of 400 Gbps during a 734 km round-trip along a single-optical fiber test channel running between Hanover and the capital city of Berlin.

400 Gbps is a pretty impressive figure, given that the current fastest deployed fiber networks run at around 100 Gbps, with most networks well behind that even. T-Labs plans to bundle together 48 of the single channels into a bundle that will offer a combined throughput of around 18.75 Tbps (18,750,000,000,000 bit/s) (24.6 Tbps, theoretical).

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