Siemens breaks network speed record

GERMAN TECH outfit Siemens claims to have set a new speed record for electrical processing of data through a fibre-optic cable.

The outfit said that it has managed to process data using exclusively electrical means at 107 gigabits per second down a 100 mile-long US network.

It is the first time that speeds like this have been seen since Dr Spinola legged it after raiding the INQ Editor's booze cabinet.

The 107 gigabit speed is 2.5 times faster than a previous maximum transmission performance record.

Siemens told Reuters that the technique used electrical processing only and removed the need to split signals into multiple, lower data-rate signals to avoid bottlenecks which makes transmission slower and more expensive.

The first products based on the prototype would be in the shops within a few years, a spokesSiemens said. µ