Japan has just smashed the record for the world’s fastest internet speed, clocking in at a mind-bending 1.02 petabits per second—a connection so fast you could download 10,000 Netflix movies in 4K in just one second.
This blistering milestone is 16 million times faster than India’s average internet speeds and about 3.5 million times faster than what most Americans get at home. Even as Japan recently slipped to the world’s fifth-largest economy behind India, its tech innovation is showing no signs of slowing down.
The record-setting feat comes from researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). They used a special fiber optic cable designed by Sumitomo Electric, featuring 19 cores, to transmit data at unprecedented speeds over a distance of 1,808 kilometers. To achieve this, scientists built 19 looping circuits—each measuring 86.1 kilometers—and had signals circle through them 21 times, effectively creating a giant ultra-fast data highway. In total, the setup carried 180 separate data streams simultaneously.

For comparison, an average home internet connection can stream a movie or two in HD without much trouble. This Japanese system could download the entire English-language Wikipedia 10,000 times over in a single second.
Naturally, the announcement set off waves of jokes and memes online. Indian users couldn’t resist poking fun at their own internet woes
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