China Launches World’s First 10G Internet With 10Gbps Download Speeds

In what could be a breakthrough for the global internet, China has announced the first commercial 10G broadband network, offering claimed speeds of nearly 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps). The 10G network has been built as part of a collaborative project between Huawei — one of China’s biggest mobile phone and telecommunications companies — and the state-owned telecom company China Unicom.

China’s 10G network has been rolled out in its futuristic megacity, Xiong’an, which lies 70 miles southwest of Beijing in Hebei. According to reports, the network’s speed peaked at 9,834 Megabits per second (Mbps), making it the fastest commercially viable broadband network in the world. So far, countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar have demonstrated world’s fastest internet speeds, but they are sparingly available for commercial use.

According to Chinese officials, the network’s latency is well under 3 milliseconds, thanks to the next-generation 50G Passive Optical Network (PON) technology that offers better data transmission speeds than the conventional fibre-optic standards.

With that speed threshold, China’s breakthrough broadband network can download more than two full movies in 4K quality or a single 8K movie in about a second. However, a more practical purpose would be in the fields of virtual reality, augmented reality, self-driving car networks, and low-latency communication — such as those experts believe would help fast-track the development of the proposed megacity in China. It may have other far-reaching implications, such as advancements in the fields of telemedicine, remote education, and smart agriculture — all of which could be pivotal in China’s increasing dominance in the world of technology.

After the 10G network is successfully deployed in Xiong’an, the government may expand the availability to more provinces for better connectivity between its major cities, such as Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

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