Comcast Trials 1 Tbps with Ciena

Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) and Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN) completed a live field trial of a 1 Terabit per second (Tbps) optical transmission spanning nearly 1,000 km, an increase in the traffic carrying capacity of 2.5 times, over Comcast's existing fiber network.The trial took place during the first week of October over Comcast's existing 100G long-haul fiber infrastructure connecting Ashburn, VA, to Charlotte, NC. The companies believe this to be the first trial in which live data traffic was carried over a 1 Tbps 16-QAM super-channel on an existing, commercial network. At the same time, that network was also carrying customer traffic over 10G, 40G and 100G wavelengths, all coexisting on a mix of 50 GHz-spaced fixed grid channels.