Scientists in the UK say they’ve developed a way to beam internet speeds at 301,000 Gbps over a single, standard optical fiber.

Researchers at Aston University did so by tapping new wavelength bands — or essentially additional colors— not used in current optical fiber cabling. 

“Broadly speaking, data was sent via an optical fiber like a home or office internet connection,” said Ian Phillips, one of the Aston University researchers on the team. 

Other scientists have been able to send even faster internet speeds at over 1 million Gbps by effectively splitting the optical light into more wavelengths to boost the data transmission rates. However, the research paper from the Aston University team says these solutions can require upgrading an entire optical fiber network.

“In contrast, MBT (multiband transmission), while limited in overall bandwidth to that of the installed standard single mode fibre (SSMF), requires system upgrade only at the node and operator level,” researchers wrote. They add that their experiment was carried out over a 50 kilometer-long optical fiber. 

Source - PCMAG