ZTE on Monday announced that the company set a world record in real-time terabit optical transmission in collaboration with China Telecom Corporation Ltd. Beijing Research Institute. Deploying a terabit Wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) real-time transmission system based on ZTE's ZXONE 8700 platform, ZTE and China Telecom completed real-time data transmission over a distance of 3,200 kilometers on G.652 optical fiber without Raman amplification that was error-free for 24 hours.

The companies built the fastest and longest-distance real-time optical transport system by using advanced Nyquist WDM Terabit PM-QPSK optical modulation and optical coherent detection technologies, in addition to ultra-high-speed signal processing and soft-decision forward error correction algorithms, achieving spectral efficiency of 4bit/Hz/s.

Long-haul transmission capability and spectral efficiency are two of the biggest hurdles that must be overcome to drive the successful deployment of Beyond 100G systems.

In 2012, ZTE and Deutsche Telekom successfully completed 100G/400G/1T long-haul transmission over 2,450 kilometers, setting a record in long-distance multi-rate mixed transmission. ZTE has deployed more than 50 100G trial and commercial networks globally.

ZTE posted record revenue in optical network products in the second-quarter of 2013.

The company is competing with Alcatel Lucent in the market of optical network products.