Although high-speed wireless technologies like Wifi 6E and 5G dominate news headlines, analog, and optical cables are still the backbone of the internet, and for good reason. Researchers in Japan just set a new fiber optic data transmission record with a technique that’s compatible with existing cable infrastructure, meaning a real-world implementation is entirely possible, and not just limited to a laboratory setting. Researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) successfully sent data down a custom multi-core fiber optic cable at a speed of 1.02 petabits per second over a distance of 51.7 km. That’s the...