Fancy downloading an entire movie in the span of 8 seconds? That is what the future could very well be, as the folks over at Verizon (yes, the company with the new logo) have just kicked off testing of an extremely fast 10 gigabit Internet service that will make use of the latest optical technology. If everything goes well for them, the future might see businesses and consumers being able to enjoy not only downloads, but also uploads with Internet speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps), and this is not the limit since there is still potential to increase this speed even further.
Such a technology upgrade can also be utilized in order to support multi-gigabit-speed Internet access services for FiOS customers, in addition to the marketplace demands that range across various services as the technology matures. The current trial comprised of a new optical line terminal (OLT) that was installed in the Verizon central office, where it generated a quartet of wavelengths, or colors of light, and each of these happen to be capable of operating at 10G/2.5G. Future versions are tipped to support the same download and upload speeds of 10G/10G per color.
A request for proposals will be issued by Verizon later this year when it comes to picking up both hardware and software for the new NG-PON2 platform. [Press Release]
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