Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs has demonstrated terabit-per-second data transmission on a single fiber using only two subcarriers.

Terabit communication has been demonstrated in the past. NEC and Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in 2011 were among the first to achieve the feat, followed by others who achieved speeds that edged into double-digit terabit speeds.

Most of these attempts depended on the use of multiple streams, or fibers, or fiber cores, or some other means of aggregating simultaneous transmission. Bell Labs’ innovation is to get terabit-per-second transmission on a single wavelength with minimal sub-carriers (as many as eight and as few as 2) in a single fiber.

The organization said its papers highlight the ability to increase fiber capacities far beyond the capabilities of today’s wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) systems.