Japan to develop superfast network

TOKYO: A research group will be set up in Japan to develop optical technology that will replace the Internet Protocol as the global standard in communications.

The group will be established in November by the government-affiliated National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and private companies, the leading business daily Nikkei said.

It will aim to develop and commercialise in around 2015 a network that can transfer data at 10 gigabits per second, 10 times faster than the next-generation network due to be launched in Japan this year, the report said.

The group will be joined by such companies as Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, Fujitsu Ltd, KDDI Corp, Hitachi Ltd, Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp.

It will spend some 30 billion yen ($260 million) on the research project over the next five years, the report said. Similar projects are already been under way in the US and Europe.

The optical network would allow as many as 100 billion devices to access it simultaneously and still enjoy extremely fast data-transfer speeds, the report said.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com