French telecoms equipment firm Alcatel-Lucent has announced innovation from its undersea cables subsidiary, Alcatel-Lucent Submarine (ASN), which is said to enable data transmission over a distance of 10,000 Kms using real-time processing prototypes of 300 Gbps.

In a statement the company said this new modulation technology is positioned to "optimise the performance of submarine cable systems" in Africa.

According to Alcatel-Lucent these cable systems have significantly reduced the costs of internet and other telecommunications services on the continent, as well as helped to improve the adoption of technology.

The company said the trial has been achieved on the 10,000km of ASN's test bed, combining the 300Gbps 8QAM (8 quadrature amplitude modulation) technology.

"8QAM technology can optimize both existing and new undersea cable systems, enabling operators to deliver more than 15 terabits-per-second (Tbit/s) per fiber pair on transoceanic systems - equivalent to 2.25 million HDTV channels streamed simultaneously.," the company stated.

The telco believes the timing of the technology is apt given the digital migration focus in many countries in Africa.

Olivier Gautheron, ASN chief technology officer, said: "This breakthrough underlines ASN's strategic focus in R&D to raise the bar for undersea fiber-optic technology. Our researchers continue to develop new solutions to further apply our own innovation to help traditional and web-scale operators cope with increasing requirements for speed, capacity and cost-effectiveness."