An optical transmission system which permits long-distance, ultrafast, high-capacity optical soliton transmission by suppressing timing jitter with simple means. In an optical transmission system which uses a transmission line composed of an optical fiber for transmitting therethrough a lightwave signal having digital information added to a return-to-zero lightwave pulse and a plurality of optical amplifying repeaters for compensating for losses by the optical fiber and in which the pulse compression effect by the nonlinear optical effect on the optical pulse and the pulse expansion effect by the dispersion effect are compensated, at least one optical band limited element which has a flat group delay characteristic near the center frequency is disposed in the transmission line at intervals of a period Z equal to the soliton period Z.sub.sol and the product, aB.sub.sol.spsb.2, of the curvature a of the product of the intensity transfer funtions of the optical band limited elements in the vicinity of the center frequency in the soliton period and the square of the full width at half maximum, B.sub.sol, of the spectrum of the lightwave pulse to be transmitted is set to a value in the range of 2.1.times.10.sup.-2 to 8.3.times.10.sup.-2.