Australia’s national broadband network (NBN) has played host to a demonstration of blistering-fast new Nokia technology that enabled it to carry data at 83 gigabits per second (Gbps) over its existing fibre network – but that doesn’t mean you’re going to see those speeds any time soon.
NBN Co sees the successful demonstration of Nokia’s prototype 100Gbps passive optical network (PON) technology – which the companies said was the first time in the world that the technology has been tested outside of a laboratory – as “an important part of [our] long-term network roadmap,” the company said in announcing that the new technology “could support the evolution to multi-gigabit technologies without any need to change NBN’s existing laid cable.”
As well as confirming that the technology works as intended, the demonstration showed that a range of PON technologies running at different speeds – including XGSPON, 25GS PON, 50G PON, and 100G PON – can co-exist on the same physical fibre-optic cable.
NBN Co and Nokia were able to use 100G PON technology to provide 83Gbps of raw data bandwidth over a single fibre (Layer 1) – a record for a single PON transmission that is four times NBN Co’s previous transmission record of 21Gbps.
When network engineers added simultaneous XGSPON and 25GS PON signals, running at 8Gbps and 21Gbps respectively, the setup provided 112Gbps of usable data bandwidth (Layer 2) across the single fibre-optic cable.
A separate test, using XGSPON, 25GS PON, and 50G PON beams simultaneously, delivered 85Gbps of raw Layer 1 bandwidth and 71Gbps of usable Layer 2 data transmission capacity across NBN’s backbone fibre network.
The ability to nearly quadruple existing network speeds without upgrading the cabling is, NBN chief network officer Dion Ljubanovic said, “an incredible result [that] demonstrates the fibre we continue to upgrade the network with today, is only limited by the capabilities of the equipment that will connect it into the future.”
With an eye on providing large amounts of bandwidth to support widespread next-generation smart city and industry 4.0 communities, NBN Co has been partnering with Australian developers property to wire new developments with fibre cable that will, as increasingly high-speed PON technologies are rolled out, provide effectively unlimited bandwidth into what Ljubanovic called “vibrant new communities” as the company “deliver a step change in next-generation speeds over our network in the long term.”
The transition from outmoded copper transmission networks to full fibre-optic networks has accelerated in recent years, with NBN Co fighting to modernise its network after years lost to the opportunity costs of expensive political infighting.
Growing demand for FTTP services is a global phenomenon, with Wolfe Research recently predicting that the number of US subscribers to fibre to the premises (FTTP) services – which run fibre-optic cabling straight to subscribers’ homes or business premises – will more than double, to 45 million, by 2033.
NBN Co, for its part, recently announced that a million premises in NSW, and a further million in Victoria, were ready for upgrading to FTTP.
To support this growth – and to ensure they can benefit from the increased revenues available from selling higher-speed broadband services that are still far from universal in Australia – NBN Co and its peers around the world are pushing hard to find new ways of squeezing new bandwidth out of their existing fibre networks.
Scientists recently announced that a new technique had managed to transmit 301Tbps over a single fibre, while widespread deployment of Nokia’s new 100G PON technology would offer smaller but readily attainable boosts in capacity.
Yet for all the optimism around the new 100Gbps technology trials, don’t expect to see that kind of broadband speed running to your house any time soon; the focus at this point is boosting the capacity of backhaul networks and undersea cables, where the addition of millions of high-speed customers – and the surge in bandwidth demand caused by adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing systems – will pressure carriers to stay ahead of demand.
“This is a huge opportunity for [network] operators to leverage their existing fibre broadband networks to efficiently add advanced services which go way beyond consumer services,” Nokia vice president of broadband networks Geert Heyninck said.
“It’s important for service providers to have choices to match the right speed and cost points to meet the different use cases and market requirements they may have.”
