AT&T has successfully tested a 1.6 Tbps single-carrier wavelength across 296 kilometers (184 miles) of its long-haul network, marking a fourfold increase over the current 400 Gbps standard. The trial, conducted between Newark, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, used AT&T’s existing fiber infrastructure and demonstrated two IEEE-compliant 800GbE circuits running end-to-end on a single optical wavelength—an industry first.
The test leveraged white box networking hardware powered by Broadcom’s Jericho3 packet processors, along with DriveNets’ software-defined networking (SDN) platform. The optical transmission relied on Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) coherent optical transponder, which operates at 200Gbaud and integrates a 3nm DSP ASIC to push single-carrier speeds to 1.6Tbps. This new technology reduces space and power consumption per transmitted bit by 50% compared to current 800G solutions. The trial confirmed seamless interoperability between packet and optical layers using 800G DR8 pluggable optics and Keysight’s AresOne-M 800GE testset.
By integrating disaggregated networking components and next-generation coherent optics, AT&T aims to meet the growing demands of AI, cloud computing, and high-bandwidth applications. The successful trial underscores the readiness of its software-driven network to support higher-speed connectivity and scale with increasing data traffic.
• AT&T successfully tested a 1.6Tbps single-carrier wavelength over 296 km (184 mi) between Newark and Philadelphia.
• The trial achieved two fully functional 800GbE circuits on a single optical wavelength for the first time.
• White box switches powered by Broadcom’s Jericho3 chipset handled packet processing.
• DriveNets’ SDN solution enabled software-defined routing and network control.
• Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) coherent optics provided 1.6Tbps transmission with 50% lower power consumption per bit than current 800G solutions.
• 800G DR8 pluggable transceivers from Coherent and Keysight’s AresOne-M 800GE testset verified performance.
“This technology demonstration highlights how AT&T is preparing its network for future traffic demands,” said Mike Satterlee, vice president of Network Infrastructure and Services at AT&T. “We anticipate network traffic to double by 2028, and innovations like this will help ensure our customers continue to experience high-performance connectivity.”
