Ciena Leaps Toward 1.6Tbps With WL6

With 400G and 800G now finding their feet in real deployments across the infrastructure world, it’s that time again for the next generation of technology to get started. Yesterday Ciena led off with the introduction of its WaveLogic 6 technology, which will bust through the Terabit barrier all the way to 1.6Tbps.

Ciena’s WL6 will support that much on a single-carrier wavelength across metro ROADM deployments. In the longhaul arena of up to 1000km, it will be 800G moving out of the shorter applications where it sits today to power internet backbones. Spectral efficiency will be improved by 15%, while space and power requirements per bit will be cut by 50%.

But we’ll have to wait a bit yet before we get there. Ciena says that new products built around the nascent WaveLogic 6 Extreme and Nano technology will become available in the first half of 2024. No doubt in the meantime we will see the usual trials and demonstrations with partners across the industry. Offering supporting comments alongside the PR were Bell Canada, Meta, and Southern Cross.

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Categories: Fiber optic cable · Telecom Equipment