African cabling and switching companies Seacom and Infinera Corp said they have successfully trialled five 100Gbps channels of optical transmission over a distance of 1,732km, proving the continent is ready for more high density networking capacity. 

The 500Gbps trail was run on Seacom's new 930km dark fiber Africa route, which links cable landing stations at KwaZulu-Natal to Terraco's data center in Johannesburg.

Seacom CEO Brian Herlihy said the event proves that projects such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) - an EU led astronomy project that could see the world's largest radio telescope array and supercomputers situated in Africa ÔÇô can take place on the continent. For more on SKA, click here, or see our interviews with South Africa's Minister for Technology Naledi Pandor by clicking on the links below.

"The trial demonstrates Seacom's commitment to increase the pace at which African networks are deploying cutting-edge telecommunications infrastructure technology to support Africa's rise as a primary scientific and business destination,"Herlihy said.

He also said shows Africa is prepared to meet demand from consumers for increased internet traffic speeds, and industry's rising demand for cloud computing.

Infinera CEO Tom Fallon said the trial used Infinera's 500Gbps Photonic Integrated Circuits, each integrating 100 Gbps coherent channels onto a single chip for transmitting and receiving the 100Gbps signals simultaneously. It also used its FlexCoherent functionality by switching between QPSK and BPSK modulation.

"With Internet traffic growing at exponential rates, driven by video, cloud computing, and mobility, the 500G PIC technology is designed to support the required growth in network capacity, while reducing the per-bit cost, space, and power consumption," Fallon said.