Chip may speed up internet 100 times

A TECHNOLOGICAL breakthrough by University of Sydney scientists could lead to people downloading the latest movie in a few seconds or chatting with small, cheap, video systems. The physicists have developed a revolutionary optical chip that could improve internet speeds to up to 100 times faster than Australia's networks. "The most exciting thing is that it is just a piece of scratched glass. It is very simple, so it is potentially cheap," said Ben Eggleton, the director of the university's Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems, CUDOS. He said the thumbnail-sized device could be commercialised within five years and used in countries such as Japan, which is "way ahead of Australia" in installing high speed fibre networks.