Huawei Technologies Co. and China Mobile Ltd. have built a 3,000 kilometer (1,860-mile) internet network linking Beijing to the south, which the country is touting as its latest technological breakthrough.
The two firms teamed up with Tsinghua University and research provider Cernet.com Corp. to build what they claim is the world’s first internet network to achieve a “stable and reliable” bandwidth of 1.2 terabits per second, several times faster than typical speeds around the world. Trials began July 31 and it’s since passed various tests verifying that milestone, the university said in a statement.
Tsinghua, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s alma mater, is plugging the project as an industry-first built entirely on homegrown technology, and credits Huawei prominently in its statement. The Chinese firm in August made waves when it released a 5G smartphone with a sophisticated made-in-China processor, inspiring celebration in Chinese state and social media. That event also spurred debate in Washington about whether the Biden administration has gone far enough in attempts to contain Chinese technological achievement.
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The network “is operated based on China’s domestically-owned key technologies,” the official Xinhua News Agency said in a report carried on Tsinghua’s website.
Bloomberg News hasn’t verified the authenticity of those claims. In February, Nokia — Huawei’s global rival — announced it’s achieved 1.2 terabits a second over what it called “metro distances” of about 118 km on an optical network in Europe.