•Unveiled two years ahead of forecast, network sends equivalent of 150 films per second

While Nigeria’s Internet speed still wobbles and brings some form of unhappiness to larger part of the over 150 million users in the country, China has beaten a global deadline, launching the world’s first next-generation Internet service, which is said to be more than 10 times faster than existing major routes – two years ahead of industry predictions.

According to China, the backbone network forms a principal data route between cities and can transmit data at 1.2 terabits (1,200 gigabits) per second between Beijing in the north, central China’s Wuhan and Guangzhou in the southern province of Guangdong.

As of the third quarter, a report by Cable.co.uk, noted that Nigeria and other African countries still have sluggish Internet speeds despite the introduction of Starlink, 5G infrastructure, and other efforts to increase and deepen coverage.

According to the data, the average download speed for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is 12.11 Mbps. More than 30 million speed tests were performed, with three million distinct IP addresses tested. A 5-GB movie would take an average of one hour and 29 minutes to download, according to Cable.

The report said Réunion (45.51 Mbps, 79th), Rwanda (39.89 Mbps, 99th), South Africa (36.46 Mbps, 104th), and Burkina Faso (35.64 Mbps, 108th) were in the top half of the ranking for network speeds.

The other 43 countries made up the bottom (slowest) half of the list. Nigeria ranked 133rd in the world with a download speed of 20.83 Mbps and an average download time of 32 minutes for a 5GB video.

Further, China explained that the line, which spans more than 3,000km (1,860 miles) of optical fibre cabling, was activated in July and officially launched on Monday, after performing reliably and passing all operational tests.

According to scmp.com, the achievement, a collaboration between Tsinghua University, China Mobile, Huawei Technologies, and Cernet Corporation – smashes expert forecasts that one terabit per second ultra-high-speed networks would not emerge until around 2025.

Most of the world’s Internet backbone networks operate at just 100 gigabits per second. Even the United States only recently completed the transition to its fifth-generation Internet at 400 gigabits per second.

The Beijing-Wuhan-Guangzhou connection is part of China’s Future Internet Technology Infrastructure (FITI), a project 10 years in the making and the latest version of the national China Education and Research Network (Cernet).

FITI Project Leader, Wu Jianping from the Chinese Academy of Engineering said the superfast line was “not only a successful operation”, but also gives China the “advanced technology to build an even faster Internet”.

Huawei Technologies Vice-President, Wang Lei at Tsinghua University on Monday, said that the network was “capable of transferring the data equivalent of 150 high-definition films in just one second”.

Tsinghua University’s Xu Mingwei compared the new Internet backbone to a superfast train track that had replaced the 10 regular tracks that used to carry the same amount of data.

According to China, backbone networks are pivotal to national education and research, as well as the rapidly growing need for data transfer from applications such as connected electric vehicles and mines that use industrial 5G technology.