Sprint Creates Single-Wavelength 40Gbps Circuit Over Old 10Gbps System

Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint Nextel Corporation deployed products and technology sourced from StrataLight Communications and Cisco to successfully create the world’s first single-wavelength 40Gbps transatlantic circuit, using fiber cable infrastructure set up by TAT-14. The achievement assumes importance considering that the hardware (cabling infrastructure) was not disturbed or changed, and at the same time a 40Gbps signal was transmitted over an old, DWDM system that was designed to carry signals not exceeding 10Gbps.

TAT-14 is a consortium of approximately 40 international telecommunications carriers, whose mandate is the laying of fiber optic cables using EDFA repeaters across the Atlantic Ocean. The total length of the cabling is 15,428 km, with a self-healing ring topology and design capacity of 640Gbps. The cable system has six landing points – four of which are in mainland Europe (Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Germany), one in UK and one in the US. The configuration has the capacity to transport approx. 9,700K circuits across the ocean.

Sprint succeeded in transmitting a single-wavelength OC768 40Gbps signal between New York and LuleA, Sweden, over the cable already laid down by TAT-14. The signal traveled a distance of 9,000km. Sprint used Cisco’s Carrier Routing System (CRS-1) and StrataLight’s IPoDWDM system and technology to feed the existing DWDM hardware with signals.

Read more about the technology trial by Sprint Nextel here.