How fast is your broadband connection? No matter how quick it may be, we doubt you recorded anything on Speedtest.net that"s close to what BT claims to have achieved in a recent trial using an existing fiber connection that connected two locations about 80 miles apart.
In their press release, BT said that in October and November of 2013, the UK broadband provider worked with Alcatel-Lucent on their super high speed broadband research project, which used a fiber connection that went from BT"s Adastral Park research campus in Ipswich to the BT Tower in London. The trial used what BT called the "flexible grid" infrastructure that allowed the fiber connection to bundle seven 200 Gbps channels into one channel with speeds up to 1.4 Tbps.
In case you need some perspective for that high of a number, BT says that 1.4 Tbps speeds means 44 uncompressed HD movies can be downloaded in just one second. While it"s unlikely BT subscribers in the UK will be able to sign up for those kinds of services anytime soon, the ISP did say that the trial proved current fiber connections are capable of handling much higher broadband speeds than previously thought. That means BT can spend less time building new fiber lines in favor of boosting speeds with its existing network. Of course, you will still need to ask BT to unblock their default porn filter.
Source: BT press release | Speed image via Shutterstock