A team of Japanese researchers has set a new world record for the fastest internet speed.

Led by the brilliant minds at the Photonic Network Laboratory of Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), the team achieved this feat using commercially available optical fiber to reach a speed of 402 terabits per second (Tbps).

This incredible speed surpasses the previous record of 301 Tbps held by the UK's Aston University.

The breakthrough was accomplished by constructing a specialized system of optical fibers.

The system employs all transmission bands of standard optical fibers and incorporates various amplification technologies.

NICT stated that this new method of accessing previously unused wavelength bands could be utilized in future telecommunications networks, providing consumers with accessible fast connections.

"The newly developed technology is expected to make a significant contribution to expanding the communication capacity of the optical communication infrastructure as future data services rapidly increase demand," NICT said in a statement.

To put this achievement into perspective, consider the following comparisons:

The speed achieved by NICT is roughly 3.5 million times faster than the Malaysian median speed of 112 Mbps, as reported by performance analytics platform Ookla.

With these internet speeds, you could download approximately 12,500 movies in a single second, which is over three times the number of films currently available on Netflix.

For gamers, you could theoretically download Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which is a massive 172 GB, in just 0.003423 seconds. In another perspective, you could complete 292 downloads of the game in just one second.