The “fastest ever” broadband speeds have been achieved in a test in London. Alcatel-Lucent and BT have reported that speeds of 1.4 terabits per second were achieved during a joint test – enough to send 44 uncompressed HD films a second.

The test was conducted on a 410 kilometre link between the BT Tower in central London and Ipswich. Alcatel-Lucent told the BBC that the demand for higher bandwidth grew by around 35 per cent every year, making the need for more efficient ways to transfer data a massively pressing issue for ISPs, particularly with the growing popularity of data-heavy online services, such as film-streaming.

There are faster methods of transmitting data such as the use of complex laser technology – but this is the first test to achieve such high speeds in “real world” conditions, outside testing labs.

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