China has officially beaten the global deadline as it launched the world's first next-generation internet service ahead of schedule. The service is more than 10 times faster than existing major routes.
The backbone network, named for its principal data route between cities, is able to transmit data at 1.2 terabits per second (Tbps) – equivalent to 1,200 gigabits per second (Gbps) – between Beijing in the north, Wuhan in central China's Hubei province and Guangzhou in the southern province of Guangdong.
Network officially launched in November
The line spans over 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) of optical fiber cabling and was successfully activated this past July. The network was officially launched in November following reliable performance testing and passing all operational tests.
The achievement was made possible thanks to cooperation between Tsinghua University, Cernet Corporation, China Mobile and Huawei Technologies. The emergence of one Tbps ultra-high-speed network was not expected until at least 2025. Many of the world's internet backbone networks operate at only 100 Gbps.
The U.S. only completed the transition to its fifth-generation Internet2 at 400 Gbps per second last 2022.
The Beijing-Wuhan-Guangzhou connection is part of China's Future Internet Technology Infrastructure (FITI), a project that was 10 years in the making.
FITI is the latest version of the national China Education and Research Network (CERNET). The project began in 2013 and is supported by the Chinese government, managed by the Ministry of Education and developed with the help of Tsinghua and 40 other universities.
Wu Jianping, FITIs project leader from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, explained that the superfast line was "a successful operation" and that it gives China the "advanced technology to build an even faster internet."
Wang Le, Huawei Technologies vice-president, told reporters during the same press conference at Tsinghua that the network can transfer "the data equivalent of 150 high-definition films in just one second."
Xu Mingwei, a professor at Tsinghua's Department of Computer Science and Technology, compared China's new internet backbone to a "super-fast train track" that replaced the 10 regular tracks that used to carry the same amount of data. He added that this made it "cheaper and easier to manage."
At a work meeting, Xu said that the FITI project is "unprecedented across the world." He noted that the project "is open to society" and can support "experimental trials of innovative network structures." Xu also estimated that FITI would be ready by the end of 2023.
The new backbone network heralds another advance for China, which has been concerned about its dependence on the U.S. and Japan for routers and other elements of internet technology.
In a bid to be more independent, all of the system’s software and hardware was domestically produced, with the technical research team making advancements in various aspects of the project, such as routers, switches and optical fiber connections.
Wu and his team developed their own super-fast router that can handle more data than ever before. The team also proposed technology to aggregate several optical paths to increase the upper limits of data transmission.
China's internet may be fast, but access is still restricted
In China, all internet users deal with a strict regime of censorship which tends to limit access to Western news outlets. The discussion of sensitive topics is also limited in the country.
China's "Great Firewall" does not allow Chinese internet users to access sites like Facebook, Google, Instagram, or Wikipedia. A report by Citizen Lab has revealed that the search engines that operate in China have 66,000 rules to control access to content that might be deemed politically sensitive.
Additionally, ChatGPT has now been banned in China for producing responses that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would otherwise censor.
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