The experiment, conducted over a 1007.48-kilometer fiber optic line, achieved a bidirectional real-time transmission speed of 64Tb per second in each direction. This setup allows for the simultaneous upload and download of 160 4K movies per second. The signal latency for the thousand-kilometer distance was recorded at just 3.43 milliseconds.
The project was a collaborative effort between China Telecom Research Institute, YOFC, and ZTE. The team successfully established the world's longest point-to-point non-loopback real-time hollow-core fiber transmission, while also building the longest extended C+L band link without optical amplification.
Hollow-core fiber technology transmits signals through air rather than solid quartz glass. This method reduces latency by 30% compared to traditional solid-core fibers. The test confirmed that this technology can be integrated with existing transmission equipment to support long-distance, high-capacity, and low-latency networks.
The validation demonstrated a 50-fold increase in transmission distance compared to similar previous hollow-core fiber experiments. Furthermore, the technology offers double the transmission capacity and a 60% increase in distance compared to the best-performing solid-core fibers currently in use.
