Now that’s fast! British scientists SMASH the record for data transmission speed, reaching a staggering 402 terabits per second – 1.6 million times faster than typical home broadband speeds

There’s nothing more frustrating than experiencing a poor broadband connection while trying to stream your favorite show.

Buffering could be a thing of the past thanks to a team of British scientists as they develop a connection that is 1.6 million times faster than home broadband.

Researchers from Alton University and their international collaborators have developed a new way to use fibre optic cables to increase transmission speeds.

This new method allows a world record of 402 terabits per second to be transferred, breaking the previous record of 301 terabits per second by 25 percent.

This technique can be applied to the same standard fiber optic cables that are already in use. No new cables are needed.

While this world record is just an experiment, researchers say the technology could be made available once it “matures.”

However, Professor Wladek Forysiak from the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies told MailOnline that this would be more relevant to ‘national backbone networks’ than the individual consumer.

This means the new technology could be used to build faster national internet infrastructure, although those changes would be most noticeable in large businesses, such as data centers.

In a technical report published by Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), researchers announced that they had set a new “world record” for data transfer speeds.

For comparison, Netflix recommends that users have a minimum bandwidth of three megabits per second to stream high-definition content without interruption (1 million megabits equals one terabit).

The speeds the researchers achieved in this study are more than 100 million times faster than the recommended bandwidth.

According to a Deloitte study, a household of five office workers probably doesn’t need more than 50 megabits per second of bandwidth.

Even a household of four influencers, with three simultaneously uploading 4K videos and downloading content, would need just over 314 megabits per second.

At the speeds achieved in this study, data from millions of households could be sent over a single fiber optic cable, without any delay.

Compared to the recommended bandwidth required to stream HD content on Netflix, this new method is over 100 million times faster

And the most exciting thing about this new research is that these astonishing speeds were achieved on standard fiber optic cables.

This means that current fibre optic networks could potentially be upgraded to these incredible speeds without having to lay new cables.

Dr Phillips from the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies said: ‘This discovery could increase the capacity of a single fibre, giving the world a higher performance system.’

Fiber optic cables, used for all high-speed broadband connections, work by bouncing light beams off the inside of glass strands.

Compared to the copper wires that were common in the past, fiber optic cables are faster, lose less data and can carry more data at once.

The researchers achieve these speeds by transmitting signals across six ‘bands’ of the infrared spectrum simultaneously. Most current fibre optic cables transmit only one or two at a time

Many Britons are struggling with slow broadband speeds, with figures from 2023 revealing which streets have the worst connections. The researchers say their new technology delivers speeds 1.6 million times faster than a standard broadband connection.

One of the biggest advantages of fiber optic cables is that they can transmit light of different wavelengths.

Signals sent on different ‘bands’ of the infrared spectrum do not interfere with each other as they travel through the cable, so they can be read separately when they arrive at their destination.

This means that fiber optics can transport multiple signals at the same time, which greatly increases the amount of data that can be transported simultaneously (also known as bandwidth).

To break the world record for data transfer, the team from Alton University sent data via all six available bands.

This breakthrough breaks the previous record of 301 terabytes per second by 25 percent, leaving previous results far behind (shown in graph)

This technology was tested on standard fiber optic cables, meaning networks could be upgraded without having to lay new cables underground (stock image)

To achieve this, the researchers had to build special amplifiers to boost the signal in the longest parts of the wavelength, parts that are normally not used.

The NICT researchers had previously set the record for the fastest data transfer: 301 terabits per second. This used four of the six wavelengths.

Despite the potential of this technology, most fiber optic cables typically transmit data only over two of the most stable bands of the infrared spectrum.

Currently, there is more than enough bandwidth to transmit the data most people need for their Internet use.

However, the researchers point out that data usage is expected to increase in the future and these two bands could soon become congested.

Dr. Philips says: ‘The newly developed technology is expected to make a significant contribution to expanding the communication capacity of the optical communications infrastructure, as the demand for future data services will increase rapidly.’