Japan Breaks Broadband Record: 100,000 Times Faster Than WiFi 7

Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has broken a broadband speed record. Engineers at NICT’s Photonic Network Laboratory have achieved data transmission at a speed of 402,000,000 Mbps over fiber optic cables commercial. With this speed you can download all seasons Game of Thrones and your Steam library in a split second.

According to a paper published by NICT, an international research team has built a transmission system consisting of 50 km of fiber optics, amplifiers and optical equalizer. The engineers transmitted signals in all possible ranges and used an equalizer. The result was more than unexpected: Bandwidth 37.6 THz.

“A wideband DWDM signal containing up to 1505 channels covering 275 nm (37.6 THz)from 1281.2 nm to 1649.9 nm, through the O, E, S, C, L and U bands along 50 km of optical fiber with suppression of water absorption peaks,” the document mentions, “The estimated data rate of the generalized mutual information (GMI) after 50 km transmission rate was 402 Tbit/s, which exceeds the previous maximum data transfer rate by more than 25%“.

The research team notes that the key to this system is a combination of six types of optical amplifiers. They enable long-distance, lossless transmission thanks to ion stimulation. On the other hand, an optical gain equalizer adjusts the intensity of light signals at different wavelengths, allowing you to take advantage of unused bandwidth.

Record-Breaking Fiber Optic Download Speed

Although the figure achieved sounds amazing, The most important milestone was achieved with the creation of commercial fiber optic cable.. Scientists note that the new wavelength ranges allow fiber-optic networks to transmit data at higher speeds. For the NICT team, this is important because it will extend the life of existing systems.

If you’ve ever given up on internet speed, this is an achievement represents a significant step in the development of telecommunications. Of course, you’ll need extremely powerful hardware to take advantage of the bandwidth. Current high-end PC components can result in bottleneck around 400,000:1.

NICT noted that they will continue to promote the development of technologies and components to exploit new transmission speeds. Engineers promised to extend the transmission range compared to conventional broadband systems.