Hubei’s Department of Economy and Information Technology reported on October 26, 2026, that a collaboration achieved real-time transmission at 3.2 petabits per second (Pb/s) over 24-core optical fiber. The collaboration involved the National Key Laboratory of Optical Communication Technology and Network, Pengcheng Laboratory, and Fiberhome Fujikura Fiber Optic Technology Co., Ltd.
At decimal units, 3.2 Pb/s converts to 400 terabytes per second. Hubei compared the rate with more than 20,000 4K movies transferred in one second and with 3.2 million households using gigabit broadband simultaneously.
How the reported rate compares with the earlier result
Hubei dates the same team’s previous result, 2.5 Pb/s, to March 2026. The increase from 2.5 to 3.2 Pb/s is 28%; Hubei described it as a rounded 30% increase.
What the reported technique involved
Tom’s Hardware attributed the transmission to spatial-division multiplexing, which uses multiple spatial channels, and transmission across the S, C, and L optical bands. It also reported crosstalk and differing requirements across those bands as technical hurdles, and described the hardware architecture as commercially compliant.
Tom’s Hardware also cited academic laboratory demonstrations of up to 5.29 Pb/s. Those demonstrations and Hubei’s reported 3.2-Pb/s real-time transmission are different categories, not a like-for-like comparison.
What the conference and journal news means
Hubei said the work was selected for OFC 2026 as a high-scoring paper and invited for publication in an international SCI journal. Those are dissemination milestones; the transmission rate remains the result reported by Hubei.
What it means for home internet
Hubei’s announcement concerned a research transmission, not a residential internet service. The household figure is a way to express the scale of the reported capacity. Hubei identified AI interaction, cloud computing, and high-definition video as areas that could benefit from greater network capacity.
