BT rival Virgin Media has trialled a 40Gbit/s live network connection over a 217 mile span of its existing 10Gbit/s backbone from Manchester to London.

Virgin Media said that the trial would be used to demonstrate whether it would be economically viable to both optimise existing optical network assets and scale the network upwards so that it offers high data transmission rates.

The firm's technical architecture director Daniel Hennessy said that the aim of the trial was to continue to meet the growing capacity needs of the high-speed services needed to service Virgin Media customers, "Our strategic suppliers have demonstrated very clearly how existing network assets can be scaled to meet the growth in demand associated with evolving customer behaviour.”

The trial used Nortel Networks’ 40G Adaptive Optical Engine dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM) transponder cards, terminating on Juniper Networks T-series routers which had 40Gbit/s interfaces.