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Scientists at University College London have developed fibre-optic equipment that can send data at 1.125 terabits per second.
This world record speed is enough to transfer an entire TV series in HQ quality in a fraction of a second.
“This is almost 50,000 times greater than the average speed of a UK broadband connection of 24 megabits per second, which is the current speed defining ‘superfast’ broadband,” Dr Robert Maher, who lead the research, said.
Downloading the same amount of data on a typical UK connection would take around an hour. Almost a third of households have speeds of less than 10 megabits per second, and would need around two hours.
They achieved the breakthrough using similar fibre-optic technology that sends light signals through the thousands of miles of cables that make up the BT broadband network today.
The milestone was achieved by sending 15 pulses of light at different frequencies at once, a so-called “super-channel”, which allowed the researchers to send information at a much faster speed. A special receiver is able to capture the wide range of frequencies and process them.
“This ultimately resulted in us achieving the greatest information rate ever recorded using a single receiver,” Dr Maher said.
Although distance and network signal deterioration mean most consumers are unlikely to see connections at the speeds found in the laboratory, UCL’s Professor Polina Bayvel said if the new design were used instead of current technology, it would mean home broadband speeds more than 10 times faster.
The technology is not yet commercially available but the UCL researchers now plan to test it to see if it can successfully carry data across the thousands of miles of optical fibres that cross the country.
