In a lab in Japan, scientists sent more than 125,000 gigabytes of data per second across a distance greater than from New York to Florida. Yes, 125,000 gigabytes.

If that doesn’t make your jaw drop, consider this: At that speed, you could download the entire streaming library of Netflix in under a second. Or the entire Internet Archive (millions of books, videos, and webpages) in less than four minutes.

Behind this record-breaking feat is the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan. The team unveiled the breakthrough at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference in San Francisco this April. The new internet speed, clocking in at 1.02 petabits per second (or about 127,500 gigabytes per second), is more than double the previous record and over 3 million times faster than the average home broadband speed in the United States.

“The result represents a major step forward in developing scalable, high-capacity networks and addressing the world’s growing demand for data,” the NICT report states.

The Fiber That Could Carry the Internet’s Future

To understand what made this possible, imagine the internet as a vast highway system. Most of today’s data travels through standard optical fibers, which are like single-lane roads. What the Japanese researchers did was akin to building a 19-lane superhighway in the same space.

The new cable they developed contains 19 cores (essentially 19 separate glass pathways) all packed into a thread just 0.125 millimeters wide. That’s the same thickness as today’s standard cables already crisscrossing the ocean floor and strung through skyscrapers.

This is important because compatibility matters. Replacing existing infrastructure is costly and time-consuming. But if new cables can slot into old systems, the transition to ultra-fast internet could be surprisingly smooth.

“The research of ultra-high-capacity transmission using coupled 19-core optical fibers and advanced optical amplification has greatly advanced the development of technology for the realization of high-capacity, long-distance optical communication infrastructure in the future,” the report added.

In simple terms, these new fibers can carry far more information without the usual problems that slow data down over long distances, like signal degradation or interference between light paths. And while these cables were once limited by range, the team overcame that challenge by improving signal strength and developing better data amplifiers.

To prove their system worked, they sent data through the cable 21 times, simulating a journey of 1,120 miles — about the distance between Chicago and Dallas.

It’s Just the Beginning

In our everyday lives, internet speed mostly means how fast Netflix loads or how quickly we can back up photos to the cloud. But under the hood, things are changing fast.

Data demand is growing at an astonishing rate. According to Nielsen’s Law, the connection speed of high-end internet users has increased by about 50% each year since the early 1980s. That means the infrastructure that powers our digital world — cloud services, video calls, autonomous cars, artificial intelligence — is under constant growing pressure.

And that’s where breakthroughs like this one come in.

This is about keeping up with a future where everything from remote surgery to virtual classrooms and planet-wide sensor networks depends on massive, seamless data flow. What makes this achievement especially striking is that it worked over long distances — the kind required for transcontinental and transoceanic cables. This effort means the new cable can transmit more data using existing infrastructure.

That’s crucial. There are over 870,000 miles of undersea fiber optic cables linking continents together. Replacing them all is out of the question. But retrofitting them with new, higher-capacity lines that fit the same size? That’s a game-changer.

It’s also a sign of what’s to come.

Just two years ago, the same team reached a similar speed but over only a third of the distance. That they’ve now tripled the range while doubling the capacity suggests that we’re nowhere near the upper limit of what optical fibers can do.

Still, this record is yet to be independently verified, and we’re likely a few years away from seeing such technology in everyday use. But the direction is clear: the internet of the future will not only be faster. It will be radically, unimaginably fast. And it may arrive sooner than we think.