December 11, 2012 – Fujitsu Ltd., Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (NTT) and NEC Corp. (NEC) commenced joint R&D toward making the world’s top-level, 400Gbps/channel-class digital coherent optical transmissions technology.

“In 2012, the supply and demand of 100G products began to converge, leading to significant growth in deployments. The demand for network connectivity will only increase. Therefore, the need for 400G solutions that provide even greater bandwidth with the lowest possible power consumption and flexible, adaptive modulation will be critical,” noted industry analyst Dana Cooperson, VP Network Infrastructure, Ovum Inc.

The three companies aim to build flexible, low-power networks in an effort to bring about a “comfortable, eco-friendly society”. Through the new project, the companies will enable the following kinds of next-generation optical network capabilities by 2014:

1. Ultra-high-speed and high-capacity optical transmissions: 400Gbps/channel-class and 24Tbps/fiber.

2. Compensation for chromatic dispersion, polarization mode dispersion and non-linear effects occurring on a fiber optic line, all of which are factors that lead to performance deterioration. This results in improved optical reach (greater than 2X that of existing technologies).

3. A substantial reduction in network power consumption (less than half of existing technologies) as a result of the need for fewer devices.

4. The construction of flexible networks through adaptive modulation/demodulation using a single hardware device.