At the University of Surrey in the UK, up to a terabyte (TB) of data has been transmitted wirelessly in less than a second between two devices 100 meters apart. This experiment holds the record for wireless data transfer, but future commercial 5G services are unlikely to reach these numbers.
Wired connections can be much faster. The record is held by a research group from Eindhoven University of Technology, in the Netherlands, and Central Florida University, in the US: 255 TB per second over a single fiber optic strand. This speed would transfer a high definition movie in about 31 microseconds. They have achieved this thanks to the use of different simultaneous light pulses, a technique that requires a very expensive type of optical fiber.
At homes we go much slower. If we study the connections by country, South Korea leads the ranking, with an average speed of 26 Mbps.
