Talking about the speed for downloading a move assumes first that there are movies worth down-loading, that the rights owners will allow people to download them, and that the storage capacity of the person downloading the movies will be able to handle it easily. This leaves open the way that the people who download the movie have to actually watch it and that they will have people who want to watch it with them.

The technical stuff is all beside the point. The point is the end user and what he or she or them want to do with all this wonderful capacity. Having said this, every technical breakthrough has been greeted with skepticism about how it would be useful and has been proved wrong, but usefulness is what's important. I have friends who watch nothing but explosions and gunfights interspersed with short sex scenes, car chases, and fights, all with cheesy special effects and no plot or characters.

Christopher Hobe Morrison, Middletown, Orange County, NY, USA

No, no, no, no, no, no, No!
The days R longer in Summer, cuz its hotter,
&
the days R shorter in winter , cuz its colder.
now don't that make sense yet?

Godzilla, Isippysakki, Japan

Surely this is complete nonsence ?
There are already over 10Gbit connections in use today. Most ISP's use faster fibre links internally to transfer data between nodes.
I feel this should be taken down as it proves nothing and isnt even worth thinking about.
No one will have these type of speeds at home any time soon.
If everyone had this then the internet would probably grind to a halt as the backbone wouldnt be able to handle the amount of traffic. Let alone the webservers out there failing to provide the content requested in a fast enough manner.

Graham, Gloucester,

To help people understand what Al posted at the bottom of these comments; GB refers to a Giga Byte where as Gb refers to a Giga Bit. As there are eight bits in each byte, the author of this article has actually commented on the speed being eight times faster than the record which was actually made.

HOpe that made sense for you guys. However, on topic, if any of this, which is clearly does, relies on ISP support and help, I think the UK will have to wait for ALONG time before seeing any of this in action.

Simon Tomlinson, Sheffield,

The factor of 8 with GB versus Gb as the unit of measure may not greatly bother those still boggling with the difference between optical fibres and fibre optics, if not the mind-numbing magnitude of speed transmissions possible with such technology, especially with the possibility of location confusion that the initial GB may entail..

dr venables preller, Warminster, UK

Could Dave from London please post only English comments. I have no idea which language has been used in his posting.

rob, london,

I think you need to learn to distinguish GB (gigabyte) from Gb(gigabit). The transfer speeds you quote throughout your article are eight times the actual claims of the Japanese.

neil f, Harrow,

Please, all jounalists, stop referring to the transmission medium as a "fibre optics system" . It is a "optical fibre system" .

L Hayball, Nottingham,

the guy below thinks he knows it all(what a gimp)!

i read the essay bout this and it reminds me how artist shem booth made the painting light emission reality matrix, The paintings about in the future post electric era were a communication grid across the universe which is faster than light(or a different method not, did anyone see the film stealth were there AI computer runs at 10 Tera bytes pr second

were not far away from that, although im sure area 51 that stuff ;)

Dave, London, uk

Ermm ... I think you're getting your bits and your bytes mixed up here. The speed record they have set is 9.08 Gb/s ... the lower case 'b' meaning it is actually 8 times slower than 9.08GB/s. However, the rest of the facts in the article make sense dispite this.

Al, Swindon,