In July 2025, a team from NICT (Japan) and Sumitomo Electric broke the fiber optic transmission record: 1.02 petabits per second (Pb/s) sustained over 1,808 km.

They achieved this using 19-core multi-core fiber with a standard diameter (0.125 mm), multiple wavelengths in C and L bands, and adapted optical amplification.

It is a demonstration of a backbone network in a laboratory, not a home connection, but it sets the benchmark for what optical infrastructures will be able to move in the coming years.

To put it into perspective: 1.02 Pb/s = ~1.02×10¹⁵ bits/s ≈ 127.5 TB/s. In other words, it's like transferring dozens of 4–5 TB disks every second.