New research coming out of the United States is promising to significantly boost the speed of Australia’s internet connection with the rest of the world.

A team of scientists from Bell Labs has been able to transmit data at an unprecedented 400 Gbps over a long-haul fibre cable, similar to ones currently servicing Australia.

The team says that the new speed broke records, recording a speed four times faster than previously though possible.

"With this performance enhancement we think we can further improve the connectivity between continents," Dr Xiang Liu, who lead the research team, said.

Fellow research, Peter Winzer, said that the breakthrough comes at a crucial time of incredible traffic growth.

"This exponentially growing traffic puts a lot of pressure on to the backbone, the submarine links and the long-haul terrestrial links that are needed to get the data  to the point where it becomes fibre to the home," Dr Winzer said. 

"With each keystroke you do on your computer on a Google search, you have immense traffic that connects your computer to a data centre that's very far away from where you are."