Just how fast is too fast?
Not just Usain Bolt-fast, who set the world record for clocking 9.58 seconds in the 100m and 19.19 seconds in the 200m sprint. What we’re talking about is not even close to the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut – the fastest theoretical production car – with a claimed 330mph top speed.
We’re talking about Japan, which recently broke practically everything – including the kitchen sink – after it set a new world record for the fastest internet speed at 1.02 petabits per second. That’s 16 million times faster than India’s average internet speed of 63.55Mbps, and 3.5 million times faster than that of the United States.
To put the bytes in perspective, a single petabyte is equal to 1,000,000 gigabytes. A single megabyte is roughly around 0.001 gigabytes. Recent data from Ookla shows that the Philippines ranks 65 th for mobile internet speeds and 58 th for fixed broadband as of February 2025 at 58.83 Mbps, and 94.40 Mbps, respectively.
It’s not exactly the signal for us to organize a coup to oust our ISPs, but Japan has been a trailblazer for almost all things tech. Their recent milestone, which was achieved by scientists at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) using a next- generation 19-core optical fiber over long distances, could theoretically download the entire Netflix library in about one second. Think of what it could do to your gaming career: downloading hefty games, playing with no lags and dropped frames could spell p-r-o provided that you have the skills to match your internet speed.
Still not convinced? At this speed, you can download the complete English Wikipedia 10,000 times in one second, or store 67 million songs from Spotify in the blink of an eye. That’s enough to stream your tunes for 1,27,000 years.
On a more serious note, Japan could potentially push the boundaries of cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence, communication, entertainment, and pretty much every nook and cranny that makes the internet its lifeblood. Just imagine what 1.02 petabits could do when scientists and researchers use it for data transfer, medical science, supercomputing, and even space exploration.
The possibilities are endless at this point.
