In Japan, a new world record for internet speed was set, transmitting 1 million Gb per second (1 Pbps) over a 19-channel fiber optic cable across a distance of 1,808 km. This is enough to download 10,000 4K movies or 20,000 copies of GTA V in one second.

A group of Japanese researchers has developed an optical fiber that is no thicker than a standard one but includes 19 coupled cores, enabling parallel data transmission.

Researchers claim that this technology will allow preparation for the future, when data traffic will sharply increase thanks to AI, 6G, and the Internet of Things.

For many years, scientists have tried to increase the volume of data that can be transmitted over fiber optics. Although they have managed to send petabits per second before, it was only over short distances (less than 1,000 km).

Long-distance transmission has always been a challenge, as the signal weakens as the distance increases, and its amplification in multi-core fiber without creating interference presents a serious technical problem.

The study's authors solved this by developing a special type of optical fiber — a 19-core fiber. It has a thickness of just 0.125 mm, the same as those used in existing infrastructure. The researchers also developed an intelligent amplification system that operates in two different light bands (C-band and L-band). The team built a system that used a combination of special amplifiers to ensure its operation across all 19 channels without mixing signals. They created 19 recirculating loops, each using one fiber core, and passed signals through them 21 times to simulate a total distance of 1,808 km.

At the end of the path, a 19-channel receiver captured the signals, and a digital processor based on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cleaned them, removing interference and calculating the data transmission rate.

Even more impressive is that the capacity-distance product, a key performance indicator for fiber, reached 1.86 exabit per second-kilometer. This is the highest figure ever recorded.

This research shows that it's possible to build ultra-high-speed, long-haul fiber optic networks without changing the size of existing infrastructure, which significantly simplifies their deployment.

In 2024, engineers at Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) achieved a record data transmission speed of 402 Tbit/s (420,000,000 Mbit/s) over standard optical fiber. NICT used the maximum number of data transmission bands along with the latest amplifiers and equalizers to achieve a total signal bandwidth of 37.6 THz. This is more than 100,000 times greater than the throughput of Wi-Fi 7 networks.

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