Rakuten Mobile and Nokia achieve 1Tb/s transmission in live network trial
Rakuten Mobile and Nokia announced that the two companies have demonstrated the first live 1 Tb/s per channel transmission over Rakuten Mobile’s commercial Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexer (DWDM) network, a speed increase of 500% on Rakuten Mobile’s existing network running at 200 Gb/s. The trial took place over two days in January 2022 and connected data centers located 135 km apart in Japan’s Kanto region.
The trial successfully demonstrated the capability to scale network capacity over the existing Nokia open optical line system infrastructure. The 1 Tb/s speed was achieved using coherent transmission powered by Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine (PSE) supporting 1 Tb/s capacity over a 150 GHz optical spectrum.
“This technical milestone will allow us to maximize bits per fiber and achieve improved power efficiency.”
Tareq Amin, CEO, Rakuten Mobile
The trial also demonstrated the ability to quickly and easily scale network capacity of the existing Nokia open optical line system infrastructure, delivering 32 Tb/s per fiber in C-band over a Nokia DWDM line system used in Rakuten Mobile’s optical network. This can be expanded to 64 Tb/s by adding L-band.
This is vital to providing maximum capacity for ever-increasing data demands and to support the latest generations of routers delivering 800 Gb/s Ethernet.
“The one terabit per channel trial demonstrated the capability to dramatically increase fiber capacity and future-proof the Rakuten Mobile network infrastructure to support new high speed data centre interconnection.”
John Lancaster-Lennox, Head of Market Unit, Nokia Japan
What does this mean for Rakuten Mobile?
The Nokia 1 Tb/s solution enables Rakuten Mobile to reduce its footprint, improving operational expenditure and flexibility to rollout in data centers.
“This technical milestone will allow us to maximize bits per fiber and achieve improved power efficiency,” commented Rakuten Mobile CEO Tareq Amin. “The enhanced capacity will also support our traffic growth, deliver higher bandwidth and enable Rakuten Mobile to provide new service offerings.”
According to John Lancaster-Lennox, Head of Market Unit Japan for Nokia, “The one terabit per channel trial demonstrated the capability to dramatically increase fiber capacity and future-proof the Rakuten Mobile network infrastructure to support new high speed data centre interconnection.”
Aided by collaborations with partners like Nokia, Rakuten Mobile continues to scale up its network capacity to enable 5G connectivity, video, and new applications for its mobile subscribers and business partners.
