Researchers in the U.S. and Netherlands have developed a new fiber optic cable that will let you download your favorite TV shows and movies faster than before.
The cable can transfer 255 terabits per second down a single strand of glass fiber, which gives a cable with this technology the opportunity to carry the entire Internet and do it faster than all fiber optic cables currently operating under the Atlantic Ocean, according to The Independent. The research team, made up of engineers from Eindhoven University of Technology and the University of Central Florida, achieved this with its creation of a multi-core strand of glass fiber.
The average fiber optic cable has thousands of strands of glass fiber, bouncing beams of light through the glass in order to transfer information. Each of these strands measures slightly thicker than a human hair.
While fibers in normal cables can only carry light for a single laser, the research team's multi-mode fiber comes with seven distinguishable cores that can carry the same amount of distinct signals at once, RT reported.
Each of the seven carriers was able to reach speeds of 5.1 terabits during testing, and the team crammed 50 carriers into each core to allow the cable to reach the 255 terabits per second speed.
While it may be decades before this multi-mode fiber is used regularly due to the cost required for replacing current cables, it may be a bigger price to not begin using cables that can transfer the Internet at thousands of times the current maximum speed, RT reported.
Dr. Chigo Okonkwo, who led the development of the new cable, said the test results "definitely give the possibility to achieve petabits per second transmission, which is the focus of the European Commission in the coming seven-year Horizon 2020 research program."
The team published their results in the journal Nature Photonics.
