You Can Now Download 44 Movies in 1 Second — the Fastest Internet Yet Was Just Invented

The news: The world has a new fastest internet speed, thanks to researchers in the United Kingdom, and it’s mindboggling. 

The record-breaking speed? 1.4 terabytes per second. To put that in perspective, an internet connection of 1.4 terabytes per second could download 44 high-definition movies in a single second, or all of the English version of Wikipedia in 0.006 seconds. Damn. 

Scientists working with telecommunication companies Alcatel-Lucent and BT used fiber cables that are already in place in the UK’s infrastructure, which means reaching these terabyte speeds won’t take too much of an overhaul of the current system. The researchers warn, however, that consumers shouldn’t get their hopes up just yet. It could still be a few years before these speeds hit the commercial mainstream.

But the sooner these speeds come, the better. The average broadband speed in the United States is somewhere around 8.5 megabytes per second. Even in Ephrata, Washington — the U.S. city with the fastest connection — internet speeds only reach 85.54 Mbps. The U.S. is notorious for lousy internet, and the UK isn’t much better. We’re used to spending hours to download a movie. Speeds approaching 1.4 terabytes per second are enough to make us wet our pants.

With this new fastest speed, everything on the internet becomes pretty much instant. That’s sort of insane, considering not too long ago we were all struggling with crawling dial-up connections and we were thankful for what we had. Now, scientists are working on connections that can download 44 movies in a second. That’s pretty wild.

Sure, these speeds might be a ways off for the average consumer, but a boy can dream. And thanks to these UK researchers, that dream is just a little bit closer to becoming reality.