Announcing their achievement in a press release, Nokia and Chorus (a tech firm from New Zealand) have demonstrated the first successful internet connection on home fibre up to 25 Gbps. The test took place in a Chorus lab in Auckland, New Zealand, and immediately reached download speeds of 21.4 Gbps.
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“While not yet commercially available, large businesses are expected to see great benefit from the increased speeds and capacity for their growing low latency cloud connectivity, IoT and industrial metaverse applications,” the company stated.
The Chorus passive optical fire network (PON) was used for the test, an already existing infrastructure used for current customers. The test ran on the PON network while simultaneously running an 8 Gbps symmetrical connection and a 900/550 Mbps Ultrafast Broadband link — a technology Chorus calls “Hyperfibre”.
“For Chorus, what’s truly outstanding about 25G PON is the ease with which it will integrate with our existing fibre infrastructure, enabling service providers to upgrade their customers on demand,” according to Chorus chief technology officer Ewan Powell.
Currently, Chorus provides New Zealand residents with 8 Gbps fibre connections through Hyperfibre using Nokia’s XGS-PON technology. This was launched back in 2020, so Chorus and Nokia are making quick progress in improving this technology.
The new 25 Gbps service uses a single wavelength, with the demo connection using 1358 nanometers for the downstream and supporting three options ranging between 1286 to 1300 nanometers for the upstream. These three options allow other services, like the 8 Gbps connection, to run over the same fibre pair as the 25 Gbps service.
In theory, optical fibre cables can power our ever growing appetite for fast internet for a generation to come. The technology has been around for some time and has been setup to be future proof, although we’re not sure to what speeds. As more cables are lain down, the maximum speeds will continue to increase. Although, the bigger priority should be to connect people to the network that have never been able to stay connected.
