Telecoms operator Colt has, in partnership with Infinera, successfully become the first to complete a field trial of 100Gbps (Gigabit per second) Ethernet (100GbE) broadband technology between London (UK) and Europe (Frankfurt) over a live network.

The trial consisted of a 100Gbps transmission over the 861km route on Colt’s low latency fibre optic network using Infinera’s DTN optical platform. A single trip latency of 4.23ms was measured across the 100Gbps circuit. A prototype Ethernet client interface was used, which is fully compliant with the industry standard ratified in June 2010, known as IEEE 802.3ba.


Colt’s new London to Frankfurt route was officially completed in August 2010 and is currently supporting live traffic, with the most recent trial showing that it has plenty of capability for future expansion. This is not a consumer product and is very much targeted at business ISP telecom needs.