Researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications (NICT) in Tokyo recently broke the world record for data transfer speeds, reaching 319 terabits per second.

The team of scientists and engineers was led by Benjamin Puttnam at the NICT, an organization with a history of data transfer feats. In April 2020, the NICT sent 172 terabits over 2,000 kilometers, setting a world record at the time.

To put it in perspective, the latest speed record would allow a person to transfer 10,000 high-definition movies, each weighing 4 gigabytes, in about one second.

To achieve this feat, the team took a coupled four-core optical fiber cable and sent the data through four optical fiber tubes. The data was then transmitted using "wavelength-division multiplexing."