We experimentally demonstrate the generation of 107-Gbit/s net-rate optical discrete multitone (DMT) signal using a 1.5-μm single-mode vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) with modulation bandwidth of 22-GHz. Utilizing a nonlinearity-tolerant channel equalization algorithm for digital signal processing (DSP), total net-rates of 726.6-Gbit/s over 2.5-km dispersion-uncompensated 7-core fiber and 533.1-Gbit/s over 10-km dispersion-compensated 7-core fiber below 7% overhead hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limit have been experimentally achieved with a 1.5-μm VCSEL based intensity-modulation direct-detection (IM/DD) system. The features of the 1.5-μm single-mode VCSEL, 2.5-km/10km multi-core fibers and fan-in/fan-out modules are presented. Besides, the Volterra series based nonlinearity-tolerant channel equalization algorithm, which improves the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with more than 5-dB, is mathematically described and experimentally validated. The results have demonstrated that 1.5-μm single-mode VCSEL and multi-core fiber based transmission can be a promising candidate to solve the capacity challenges in short-reach optical interconnects.