Infinera and Fastweb, a primary Italian telecommunications operator, have flaggged the successful demonstration of 500 gigabits per second (500G) single-wavelength service connectivity in a production network using Infinera’s configurable technology on the Groove platform.

The high-speed optical transmission demonstration, the first in Italy, spanned some 180 kilometers (km) on Fastweb’s low-latency long-haul backbone network, between Milan and Turin.

Infinera said the 500G single-wavelength trial – implemented over the operator’s existing optical infrastructure without special amplifiers, tuning, or changes – demonstrated its capability to scale its infrastructure network to meet the increasing bandwidth demands of end-user customers. 

“Providing our customers with resilient, high-quality, and innovative solutions is in Fastweb’s DNA,” said Fastweb CTO Andrea Lasagna. “As the market for high-performance long-haul transport continues to grow at an accelerated pace, a scalable and simple network approach is required to satisfy the growing demand for bandwidth. This trial confirms the outstanding performance provided by Infinera’s innovative solution, which enables us to deliver a best-in-class customer experience at the highest transmission speeds.”

Infinera noted that its 7300 Multi-Haul Transport Platform, its mTera Universal Switching Platform and Groove 600G technology were part of Fastweb’s backbone network spanning some 650 nodes. “[They] provide the flexibility and future development and delivery of a range of programmable high-speed end-user services at 400G, 500G, and up to 600G,” the vendor said.