The project involved Japanese, Australian, Dutch, and Italian researchers, who achieved the new record over a 67km length of fibre.

The 19-core fibre complies with complies with international standards for fibre size, so it could easily be adopted.

Another benefit of the new design is that less digital processing – and therefore less power – per bit.

Macquarie University's part was the development of a 3D laser-printed glass chip that allows low loss access to the 19 streams of light carried by the fibre and ensures compatibility with existing transmission equipment.

"Here at Macquarie University, we've created a compact glass chip with a wave guide pattern etched into it by a 3D laser printing technology. It allows feeding of signals into the 19 individual cores of the fibre simultaneously with uniform low losses. Other approaches are lossy and limited in the number of cores," said Macquarie University School of Engineering postdoctoral research fellow Dr Simon Gross.

The fibre was developed by the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and Sumitomo Electric Industries.

Researchers at the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) and the University of L'Aquila (Italy) also collaborated on the project.

The current generation of subsea cables carry 22 terabits per second in each of 16 fibre pairs.

Gross pointed out that current technology is practically limited to only a few terabits per second due to interference between the signals.

"We could increase capacity by using thicker fibres. But thicker fibres would be less flexible, more fragile, less suitable for long-haul cables, and would require massive reengineering of optical fibre infrastructure.

"We could just add more fibres. But each fibre adds equipment overhead and cost and we'd need a lot more fibres."

Gross hopes to see the new technology in use within five to 10 years.

Another researcher involved in the experiment, Professor Michael Withford from Macquarie University's School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, thinks there are many other ways the optical chip could be used.

"The optical chip builds on decades of research into optics at Macquarie University," he said.

"The underlying patented technology has many applications including finding planets orbiting distant stars, disease detection, even identifying damage in sewage pipes."