Chinese telecommunications provider ZTE showed off a new fiber optic network capable of 1.7 Tbps over a single fiber cable. Computer World reports that the ZTE network trial utilizes Wavelength Division Multiplexing technology to pack more information through a single cable by employing multiple wavelengths that comprise different channels.

The ZTE fiber network runs 1,750 kilometers (just over 1,087 miles) and uses eight channels- each capable of 216.4 Gbps- to send data at speeds up to 1.7312 Tbps. The company has no immediate plans to implement such a network. Rather, they wanted to prove that an upgrade to 200 Gbps per channel speeds is possible. To put their achievement in perspective, Comcast currently has fiber networks running at 10 Gbps, 40 Gbps, and 100 Gbps channel speeds, according to an article on Viodi.

And to think that I only recently upgraded to a Gigabit router! I can't wait to see this technology trickle down towards a time when home networks are running through fiber optic cables and doing so at terabit per second speeds!

Image courtesy kainet via Flickr Creative Commons.