Fujitsu, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and NEC announced that they created a joint research effort to develop the world's "top-level, 400 Gbps/channel-class digital coherent optical transmissions technology".

The companies plan on leveraging the technology foundation of 100 Gbps transmissions methods and "enhance" its performance and functionality to arrive at "ultra-high speeds, low energy consumption and flexibility".

"In 2012 the supply and demand of 100G products began to converge, leading to significant growth in deployments," said Ovum analyst Dana Cooperson in a prepared statement. "The demand for network connectivity will only increase. Therefore, the need for 400G solutions that provide even greater bandwidth with the lowest possible power consumption and flexible, adaptive modulation will be critical. […] Carriers, enterprises, governments, and others would be wise to look closely at this solution as they evolve their networks."

The companies said that the technology will deliver a bandwidth of 400 Gbps by using dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying, which is used in 100 Gbps transmissions, but will add with dual-polarization 16 quadrature amplitude modulation with a 60-channel fiber infrastructure. The technology is expected to enable the world's highest capacity optical networks to reach a bandwidth of 24 Tbps.