Not to be left behind by rivals Infinera (s INFR) and Ciena (s CIEN), Huawei of China and Corning (s GLW), (a company known for making optical cables and glass for televisions, phones and tablets) have conducted a 3,000 km Ultra Long-Haul (ULH) transmission of 100G coherent Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology. The test was done at the Society of Cable and Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta, Georgia.

At the event, Huawei demonstrated the latest 100 Gbps single wavelength coherent technology and is also demonstrating co-transmission with its 40 Gbps coherent solutions at 50 GHz channel spacing.

Michael Kennedy, principal analyst at ACG Research in an interview with Fierce Telecom extolled the virtues of Coherent technologies.

“Coherent technology actually makes 100 Gbps cheaper than non-coherent, though for now it is more costly because it’s a newer technology. With coherent, think of it as a light beam with all of the light tightly aligned, but with non-coherent, the light would be more diffused. The coherent beam would look like a pen light if you shined it at the moon; the non-coherent would be like a flash light. Coherent reduces the need for amplification and increases the distance. It reduces chromatic dispersion, so you can have wavelengths set closer together, and you would need fewer sub-channels.”

Here are some of our previous posts about 100 Gbps networks.

• Under the Atlantic Ocean, data zips at 100 Gbps.
• Verizon delivers 100 Gbps speeds to US Internet backbone
• We will soon live in a 100 Gbps world