New Delhi, July 11 -- In a major breakthrough for the future of global communications, a team of international researchers led by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and Sumitomo Electric Industries has achieved the world's fastest long-distance optical data transmission. The team successfully sent data at a rate of 1.02 petabits per second over a distance of 1,808 kilometres, using a specially designed 19-core optical fibre.

To put it into perspective, this distance is roughly equal to the journey from Sapporo to Fukuoka in Japan, from Missouri to Montana in the US, or from Berlin to Naples in Europe. The amount of data transmitted in just one second is more than what all internet users worldwi...