4 million times faster than the USA: Japan set a world record for internet speed
Kyiv • UNN
Japanese researchers transmitted over 125 thousand gigabytes of data per second over a distance of more than 1800 km, setting a new world record for internet speed. This achievement was made possible by a new type of optical fiber compatible with existing infrastructure.
Japanese researchers transmitted over 125,000 gigabytes of data per second over a distance of more than 1800 km, setting a new world record for internet speed. This is 4 million times faster than the average broadband speed in the US and twice the previous record. The achievement was made possible by a new type of optical fiber compatible with existing infrastructure. This is reported by UNN with reference to LiveScience.
Details
Japanese researchers claim to have "set a new world record for internet speed, transmitting over 125,000 gigabytes of data per second over a distance of 1802 kilometers," the publication states.
This is approximately 4 million times faster than the average internet speed in the US. It also more than doubles the previous world record of 50,250 Gbit/s, set by another team of scientists in 2024.
To achieve this new speed, the team developed a new type of optical fiber to transmit information at revolutionary speeds over a distance roughly equivalent to that between New York and Florida.
According to a statement from Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, detailed information about this achievement was presented on April 3 at the 48th Optical Fiber Communication Conference in San Francisco.
In March 2023, the same team achieved a similar transmission speed, but over less than a third of the distance covered in the new achievement. The biggest obstacles to increasing the range were further reducing data loss that can occur over long distances and identifying ways to amplify data, the statement said.
Solving these problems led to an increase in signal power, allowing data to be transmitted over a greater distance.
The statement says that this record "demonstrates technological progress in the development of scalable, long-distance, high-bandwidth optical communication systems that could meet the growing global demand for data."
The volume of data traffic worldwide is expected to grow significantly in the near future, so new communication infrastructure may be needed, the statement said. The team now hopes to explore practical applications in telecommunications.
Addition
The new type of optical fiber is equivalent to 19 standard optical fibers in terms of its data transmission capacity. The new optical fiber is better suited for long-distance data transmission than existing cables because the centers of all 19 fibers interact with light in the same way, so they experience fewer light fluctuations, resulting in less data loss.
The new cable compresses 19 individual fibers with a diameter of five thousandths of an inch (0.127 millimeters), which is equal to the thickness of most existing single-fiber cables already in use. This means that the new cable can transmit more data using existing infrastructure.