Researchers seem to have cracked 6G wireless, achieving speeds over 9,000x faster than the 5G average at 938 Gbps—would download Black Myth Wukong in 1.1 seconds
The science people have been at it again, doing their sciencing, and this time they've gone and proved that wireless speeds can be even speedier than the already-speedy speeds we're used to. Over 9,000-times faster, in fact.
Some nerds over at University College London (UCL) have set a new wireless transfer speed record (via Interesting Engineering) by combining all-electronic and optical («optoelectronic») methods. The ultimate end-result is a wireless transfer speed of 938 Gbps. And I'm sure, like me, you probably consider that a bit of a failure. Seriously, they couldn't push a little harder and crack the 1,000 Gbps barrier? So close and yet so far.
Still, that's 117.25 GB/s which, if translated directly into an actual data transfer, would mean you'd be able to download all 130~ GB of Black Myth: Wukong in about 1.1 seconds. If they'd broken 1,000 Gbps that would be 125 GB/s, and Black Myth: Wukong could be downloaded in 1.04 seconds. And if we're rounding down that means 1 second, right?
The 938 Gbps the researchers achieved is also, as UCL says, «up to 9,380 times faster than the best average 5G download speed in the UK, which is currently 100 Megabits per second (Mb/s) or over.» Or, as I like to call it, «still not 1,000 Gbps».
Setting aside the needless ragging on the techie folk, this is seriously impressive. If you're interested in the technical details you can check out the research paper, but UCL gives a simple explanation, as follows.
«Typically, wireless networks transmit information using radio waves over a narrow range of frequencies. Current wireless transmission methods, such as Wi-Fi and 5G mobile, predominantly operate at low frequencies below 6 GHz.
»But congestion in this frequency range has limited the speed of wireless communications.
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«Researchers from UCL Electronic & Electrical Engineering overcame this bottleneck by transmitting information
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