NTT Corp, Japan"s incumbent telco, claims to have raised the ceiling on wireless bandwidth, after achieving a peak data transfer rate of 2.5Gbps in laboratory trials. The previous highest wireless transfer rate was 1Gbps, but NTT"s researchers believe they can ultimately take wireless communications up to 10Gbps.
Given that wireless equipment manufacturers are struggling to build equipment that can realize 2.5Mbps, and fixed-wire equipment makers are struggling to sell switches that already support 10Gbps of sustained capacity, pushing wireless to these dizzy heights might seem a little superfluous.
However, even if there is no immediate need for gigabit wireless links, NTT"s researchers are at least exploring technology that uses spectrum that has so far not been utilized by anything else. In a world where radio spectrum is becoming increasingly congested, that alone might be a reason why NTT"s efforts could well pay dividends in future.
For instance, the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands, spectrum previously used largely for background telemetry and monitoring tasks is quickly being occupied by IEEE 802.11x WLANs and Bluetooth interconnect links.