KPN International, a division of Dutch telco KPN, claims to have completed Europe’s first field trial of 400G technology.
The operator teamed with Chinese equipment vendor Huawei to trial an OTN-based 400G network covering 540km between Amsterdam and Dusseldorf, Germany. KPN claims the long-haul transmission test shows 400G is ready to break out of the laboratory, but plans further tests with onboard DSP functionality.
Jack Wang, president of the Huawei Transport Network Product Line, says the network was developed in cooperation with KPN, noting such collaborations “helps us design products suitable to customer needs, and clarify the evolving trend of the next generation transport network.”
The 400G announcement came a day after the two firms hailed a breakthrough for KPN’s 100G WDM backbone, which spans 1,700-km in total and connects Amsterdam to Paris, via Germany.
Huawei deployed its second generation soft-decision forward error correction (SD FEC) technology on the network, which it claims cuts the power per bit used by WDM transmission, and can handle distances up to 4,000-km, 1,000-km longer than its first generation product.