According to Live Science, researchers have set a record for fiber optic data transmission speed at 402 Tb/s, which is approximately 1.6 million times faster than typical household broadband speeds.
To achieve this milestone, researchers at Aston University in the UK utilized the entire wavelength bandwidth used in commercial fiber optics, rather than just one or two bands typically used in most broadband connections.
The record for the fastest fiber optic internet in the world has been broken. (Photo: Nexstar Media).
In other words, the research team has constructed the world’s first optical transmission system that covers all 6 wavelength bands used in fiber optic communications, including O, E, S, C, L, and U bands.
Notably, the researchers achieved this record speed using standard commercial fiber optic cables, meaning there was no need to install specialized cables for the implementation.
This methodology was subsequently outlined in a technical study published by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan.
The new record is 25% faster than the previous record, which was also set by the same group of scientists at Aston University in March.
In earlier experiments, the research team achieved a speed of 301 Tb/s (equivalent to downloading 9,000 HD movies in one second) using just a single fiber optic cable.
At this speed, it would take only one minute to download all the movies listed on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).
For comparison, the “Broadband Performance Report in the UK” published in September 2023 states that the average internet speed for households in the UK is currently just 69.4 Mb/s.
