Swedish silver surfer gets world's fastest broadband

By Simon Aughton

Posted on 13 Jul 2007 at 15:21

A 75-year-old Swedish woman has the world's fastest internet connection - at a torrent-busting 40 Gigabits per second.

Sigbritt Löthberg of Karstad has never had a net connection before, but she just happens to be the mother of Peter, an internationally renowned expert in optical networks who works for Cisco. He arranged the hook-up through the local council's network.

Löthberg developed a new modulation technique which means that data can be transferred directly between routers up to 2,000km apart. In theory there is no limit to the distance that data could travel at this high speed - provided optical cables are in place.

According to Löthberg, just one part of the process proved troublesome.

"The most difficult part of the whole project was installing Windows on Sigbritt's PC," he told The Local.