Japan's internet is so fast it can download all of Netflix in 1 second: Check speed and others details here

India Today

14-07-2025

Imagine being able to download everything on Netflix in just one second. That might sound futuristic, but you may not have to wait 20–30 years to see it in real life. This massive internet speed limit is exactly what researchers in Japan have managed to achieve. Scientists at Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) have set a new world record for internet speed, reaching 1.02 petabits per second.advertisementMost of us measure internet speed in megabits per second (Mbps). One petabit equals one million gigabits — or a billion megabits. So this new record is roughly 1,020,000,000 Mbps. For comparison, the average internet speed in the United States is around 300 Mbps, while in India it's closer to 64 Mbps. This new speed is millions of times faster and fast enough to download Netflix's entire content library in under a second.Fastest speed on existing infrastructureSo, how did the researchers manage to pull this off? According to NICT, their research team used a special type of optical fibre with 19 cores. It contains 19 tiny channels that can each carry data. Normally, fibre-optic cables have just one core, but these experimental cables multiply the amount of data that can be sent, without increasing the overall size of the cable. In fact, the cable used in the experiment is the same standard size (just 0.125 mm thick) as those used globally today.Data sent over thousands of miles
Notably, this test was not limited to a short distance either. The researchers transmitted data over 1,808 kilometres (about 1,123 miles), using a setup that looped the signal through 19 different circuits, each 86.1 km long. A total of 180 data streams were transmitted simultaneously, resulting in bandwidth of 1.86 exabits per second per kilometre.'Our goal was to demonstrate that incredibly fast internet speeds can be achieved using infrastructure that already exists,' said NICT.Real-world possibilitiesNow, if you're wondering what kind of real-world tasks could benefit from this speed — think big. Really big. From downloading the entire English version of Wikipedia (with all revisions) thousands of times per second, to instantly streaming 8K ultra-high-definition video, the possibilities with this massive internet speed are endless. In the future the high-performance cloud computing, AI model training, large-scale remote collaboration, and global data storage systems would all benefit from this internet speed immensely.Notably, while this technology is still in the research and development stage, the fact that it utilises standard-sized fibre cables makes real-world implementation more feasible in the near future. For now, there's no specific timeline for public rollout, but the record does offer a glimpse into the future of internet connectivity.- Ends