Australian scientists hit 44.2 Tbps fibre speed

At the Register: Record-breaking Aussie boffins send 44.2 terabits a second screaming down 75km of fiber from single chip. The news from Monash University shows there is still plenty of headroom for fibre broadband.

Tech is perhaps five years away from actual deployment, we’re told

Katyanna Quach writes:

Australian scientists say they have broken data communications speed records by shifting 44.2 terabits per second over 75km of glass fibre from a single optical chip.

The five-by-nine millimetre prototype gizmo is described as a micro-comb in a paper detailing its workings, published in Nature Communications on Friday. Light shone into the micro-comb is looped around a ring to produce 80 beams at various infrared wavelengths. Each beam carries a stream of data.

Terabits everywhere in five years

Elsewhere the report says the technology is perhaps five years away from deployment. It’s possible it could be used on New Zealand’s Ultrafast Broaband network, although we may have to rethink what we mean by ‘ultrafast’ in this context.

At the time of writing Chorus is rolling out Hyperfibre, which boosts broadband speeds on the UFB network to 4 Gbps and will later extend to 8 Gbps. These speeds seemed unattainable and abstract a decade ago with the UFB network first started operating.

While 44.2 Tbps seem exotic today, it could be everywhere in time for the next but one Rugby World Cup. You will be able to watch the game on an 8K TV with a connection that fast.