A few years ago, Netflix, online video games or video calls were unthinkable: the loading and download speeds on the Internet made it impossible to imagine it. And yet … Now, a team of Japanese scientists claims to have established a new world internet speed record: they have transmitted information, more than 125,000 gigabytes of data per second over 1,802 kilometersa straight line between Madrid and Munich approximately. Thus, in just a second they sent the equivalent of 50 million photos in high resolution.
We are talking about 4 million times the average connection speed, which would allow you to download the entire Internet file in less than four minutes, according to approximate estimates. This too Duplicate the previous world record of 50,250 GB/s, established by another team of scientists in 2024.
To achieve this new speed, which has not been verified independently, The team developed a new type of optical fiber to send information at revolutionary speeds.
The details of this achievement were presented at the 48th Communication Conference for Fiber Optics in San Francisco, according to a statement from the National Institute of Information Technology and Communications.
The new type of optical fiber It is equivalent to 19 standard optical fibers in data transmission capacity. The new optical fiber is more appropriate for long -distance transmission than existing cables, since the centers of the 19 fibers interact with the light in the same way, so they experience less light fluctuations and, therefore, a lower loss of data.
The new compress cable 19 separate fibers in a diameter of 0.127 millimetersthe same thickness as most existing monofibra cables. This effort means that the new cable can transmit more data using existing infrastructure.
In March 2023, the same team reached similar transmission speeds, but in less than a third of the distance covered in the new achievement. The main obstacles to increasing scope were to further reduce data loss, which can occur to long distances, and find a way to amplify the data, according to the statement.
The solution of these challenges led to a greater intensity of the signal, which allowed the data to travel greater distance. For this demonstration, The data went through a transmission system 21 timesfinally reaching a receiver after traveling the equivalent of 1800 kilometers.
This record demonstrates technological progress towards the development of long -distance optical communication systems, high capacity and scalable, which They could meet the growing global data demand, according to the statement.
It is expected that the volume of data traffic worldwide will increase significantly in the near future, so a new communications infrastructure may be necessary, according to the statement. Next, the team expect to explore practical applications in the field of telecommunications.