Japan Sets New World Record with Blazing Internet Speeds—3.5 Million Times Faster Than the U.S.

Imagine being able to download everything on Netflix in just a second. That’s not science fiction in Japan—it’s real life. The country has just smashed the global internet speed record, and the numbers are almost too fast to believe.

With internet performance that makes most of the world look outdated, Japan’s latest breakthrough puts its digital infrastructure light-years ahead of the competition. While many of us still wrestle with buffering videos or waiting hours to install large files, users in Japan could complete those tasks before you even blink.

1.02 Petabits Per Second: The Fastest Internet Ever

The new record? A jaw-dropping 1.02 petabits per second—roughly 3.5 million times faster than the average internet speed in the United States, which clocks in at about 242 megabits per second. That’s not just fast; it’s revolutionary.

This remarkable feat was achieved by the Photonic Network Laboratory at Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), in collaboration with Sumitomo Electric and partners in Europe. Together, they developed a cutting-edge fiber optic cable equipped with 19 individual cores—allowing the transmission of massive amounts of data over a staggering 1,808 kilometers.

Same Size Cable, Unmatched Capacity

What makes this innovation even more impressive is that the cable’s physical size hasn’t changed—it’s still just 0.125 mm thick, the same as standard industry fiber. But its ability to carry data has skyrocketed, hitting a transmission rate of 1.86 exabits per second per kilometer, the highest ever recorded.

To achieve this, researchers used 19 looping circuits measuring 86.1 km each, with the signal passing through them 21 times—resulting in 180 simultaneous data streams moving flawlessly to their destination.

So, What Can You Do With That Speed?

The numbers are hard to wrap your head around. This speed could theoretically download:

• The entire Netflix library in one second

• Steam’s full game catalog (about 1.2 petabytes) in ten seconds

• The English-language Wikipedia 10,000 times over in a single second

• 10 million 8K videos… streamed simultaneously

• Or, for music fans, about 127,500 years’ worth of songs in less than the blink of an eye

It’s not just speed for speed’s sake—it’s a technological leap that could reshape everything from scientific research to digital entertainment.

When Will the Rest of the World Catch Up?

If you’re hoping to see this speed in your home soon, don’t hold your breath. The U.S. and many other nations are far behind Japan in fiber optic innovation and infrastructure investment. There’s currently no timeline for when this kind of speed might roll out globally.

So, for now, if you want a taste of the fastest internet on Earth, your best bet might be booking a trip to Japan—where the future of the internet has already arrived.