If you’re old enough to remember broadband internet, you’ll know just how far it’s come. Only a decade ago a movie would take an hour to download – and before that, even longer.
Nowadays, things are wildly different. But imagine having an internet connection so fast that not only can it download a movie instantly – the entire contents of your laptop’s hard drive can be downloaded in mere seconds.
That could soon become a reality. According to the South China Morning Post, China has just gone full beast mode in the internet game and rolled out a backbone internet network that links the cities of Beijing, Wuhan and Guangzhou with what it has called the “world’s fastest internet”.
Spanning over 3,000km (1,860 miles), the network clocks in at a whopping 1.2 terabits per second, making it over 10 times faster than the rest of the world, whose backbone networks currently operate at an average of about 100 gigabits per second. To put that into perspective, that's like downloading 150 HD movies in just one second.
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The project is a mega collab between Tsinghua University, China Mobile, Huawei and Cernet Corporation, who first flicked the switch on the super-fast service back in July. After a few months of testing, it's officially up and running. What’s more, they've gone and done it a whole two years before everyone thought it was possible.
This Beijing-Wuhan-Guangzhou superhighway is part of something called the Future Internet Technology Infrastructure (FITI) project, which has been a decade in the making. It's all about prepping China for the internet of the future.
Tsinghua University’s Xu Mingwei compared the new internet backbone to a superfast train track that had replaced the 10 regular tracks that used to carry the same amount of data, stating that it's not just faster; it's simpler and cheaper to run.
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So why is all this important? Well, backbone networks are called that for a reason – they support a country’s online infrastructure, including national education, research, and even 5G tech for things like smart cars and industrial setups.
And yet, this network is not even the fastest we’ve ever seen. In 2021, a team of engineers in Japan set a new world record for internet speed, reaching an astonishing 178 terabits per second.
The researchers, from UCL were able to maintain the speed consistently over 1,865 miles. The achievement way surpasses the speeds achieved in the FITI project, making it seem a little slow in comparison.