Chinese vendor ZTE ZTE Corp. has conducted a field demonstration of optical networking equipment capable of transporting data at 1.7Tbps.

The demonstration utilized patented ZTE high-frequency technology to accomplish a 200Gb/s polarization multiplexing QPSK signal transmission at 50GHz through 1,750km of standard single model fiber optic cable, according to the company. This resulted in a 25 per cent increase in spectrum efficiency and an increase in transmission efficiency.

"The experiment proves a seamless upgrade from a 100G transmission system to a 200G system is possible," ZTE said in a stetement. A record of the demonstration was presented at the OFC/NFOEC 2012 conference.

ZTE has also successfully complete a single-channel 11.2Tbit/s optical signal transmission experiment. The company has completed several trial network projects in the 100G and beyond-100G fields with the mainstream operators from China, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Last week, ZTE's Chinese competitor Huawei also showed a prototype system that can handle 400Gbps per channel and offer a total capacity of 20Tbps.