India’s digital backbone gets a major speed boost as Constl and Ciena hit a 1 Tbps milestone over 1,450 km without regeneration.
India’s long-haul optical networks just crossed a new performance threshold. Constl has validated a record 1 Tbps transmission on a single optical channel over its 1,450 km MumbaiChennai route, leveraging Ciena’s Wave Logic 6 Extreme (WL6e) coherent optics. The achievement marks the first successful 1 Tbps long-haul deployment by an Indian digital infrastructure provider, an upgrade that directly aligns with rising demand from hyperscalers, cloud operators, and AI data infrastructure.
At the core of the breakthrough is Ciena’s WL6e platform, engineered for ultra-high-capacity, power-efficient transport. Constl’s live field trial demonstrated that a full terabit could be delivered end-to-end across one of India’s busiest fiber corridors without regeneration significantly reducing both latency and operational costs. With the commercial deployment now underway, Constl is positioning this backbone enhancement as a foundational step toward serving next-generation 800 GbE workloads that AI clusters and large data centers are beginning to demand.
Constl’s rapid network expansion adds further context. Since its launch in 2023, the company has rolled out more than 12,000 km of fiber and interconnected around 100 data centers across 13 cities. The new capability, enabled by WL6e’s leap in coherent optical performance, strengthens its pitch to hyperscaler customers seeking deterministic, high-bandwidth, power-optimized links for scaling AI infrastructure across regions.
The tech uplift is also significant from a transport-layer engineering standpoint. WL6e doubles wavelength capacity from 800 Gb/s on the earlier WaveLogic 5 Extreme to 1.6 Tb/s while improving spectral efficiency and lowering cost per bit. The energy consumption reductions align with the sector’s sustainability targets, making high-capacity routes more economical to operate over the long term.
For India’s broader digital ecosystem, the timing is critical. As edge-to-core data traffic surges with AI, cloud gaming, fintech, and enterprise SaaS, long-haul networks are becoming pressure points. Constl’s terabit-class milestone signals that Indian fiber infrastructure is evolving to keep pace with global transport benchmarks. The Mumbai Chennai corridor is just the start: the company expects the upgrade to underpin future expansion of its terrestrial backbone, giving India an increasingly AI-ready optical foundation.
