Petabit vs. a speeding bullet: Which one do you think wins?

Louisville, Ky. (July 28, 2025) – An international research team recently smashed the world internet speed record by transferring information at a speed of 1.02 petabits per second (Pbps) over a distance of 1,808 km (1,123 miles).

According to the press release, they did it using a newly developed 19-core optical fiber. It marks the fastest long-distance transmission achieved in any optical fiber to date.

But what is a petabit and just how fast is it, really?

Is it more powerful than a locomotive? Faster than a speeding bullet? The short answer is that the comparison isn’t really a fair one because a petabit isn’t speed itself. It’s actually a quantity of data.

Petabits are units of digital information that can handle vast amounts of data generated and stored daily.

In the spirit of the times, we asked AI how it would compare a bullet and 1 petabit. This is what we got:

• A bullet crosses a football field in about 0.1 second.
• 1-Pbps network could transfer enough data to fill 100,000 Blu-ray discs in that same time.

Good try AI, but that still doesn’t really clarify the impact of what the research team did. So, let’s think of it in everyday terms.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines broadband (high-speed internet) as 100 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 20 Mbps upload speeds.

That’s the base level of what most U.S. households need. For example, streaming 4K video takes about 25 Mbps, email and social media take about 1 each, downloading a file about 10, and telecommuting or remote learning takes about 25 per person.

You may have heard of a gigabit – the next level of internet speed some households can access. Essentially, it takes 1,000 Mbps to equal one gigabit per second (Gbps). That’s followed by the next level, a terabit, which is the equivalent to 1,000 gigabits.

A petabit is 1 million times larger than a gigabit and 1,000 times larger than a terabit. Here are some analogies of what that represents so you can really wrap your head around it:

• 1 petabit could support 200 million HD Netflix streams at the same time
• 1 petabit could hold the equivalent of 6,250 U.S. Library of Congress collections
• 1 petabit can transfer 31,250 4K movies in one second

It’s so big that it’s hard for the human brain to even understand it, and it’s now a reality over long distances. In the past, speeds this fast were confined to a handful of small, highly regulated internal networks; this transmission went more than 1,123 miles (longer than the drive from New York City to Memphis, Tenn.)!

So, all this certainly is interesting, but why does it matter?

The world of technology and the internet continue to shift faster than that petabit of data through a network.

We’re already seeing the general use of generative AI, nanotechnologies, and edge computing, just  to name a few. Who knows what the next major innovation will be that changes the digital world once again? It’s nearly impossible to predict. As new technologies emerge, Americans will inevitably need faster ways to transmit large amounts of data.

The bottom line is that all of it will likely impact the job market, how governments operate, and the ways we interact and communicate. Imagine not yet having the basic digital skills or equipment to navigate the modern world as it is – let alone thinking about what’s next.

All of us at Connected Nation work daily toward closing the Digital Divide, that gap between those who can benefit from the resources and opportunities the internet and its related technologies provide and those who cannot.

The petabit is just another sign that we must demonstrate urgency as a nation when it comes to bringing all people into a digital world.

We must work together to not only expand access to high-speed internet but make it affordable, help people get the equipment they need to adopt it, and provide more training in essential digital skills so they can use it.

Everyone belongs in a Connected Nation.