THE National Broadband Network has nothing on "laser beam" technology, says Australia's most popular talkback host Alan Jones.

In a jumble-up worthy of The IT Crowd, Jones this morning used news of a breakthrough in fibre-optic speeds to trash the Government's plan to build a national fibre-optic network.

"German scientists have broken a speed record, sending data contained on 700 DVDs over a single laser beam in one second," he said on his morning show.

"Seven hundred DVDs. In one second.

"The scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology said they've broken the world record by sending data at a speed of 26 terabits per second."

Jones said the announcement was proof that the NBN would be outdated by the time it was built, without realising the network was based on exactly the same technology.

"Canberra wants us to believe that the technology we're spending anything up to $60 billion on won't be outdated by the time it's rolled out," he said.

"Of course, they're kidding. But it is government these days in Canberra, and they're always kidding."

Fibre-optic cables use pulses of light — or a "laser beam" — to transfer data.

The record set by the researchers in Germany was for the fastest ever data transfer over a single fibre-optic cable.

The NBN will see fibre-optic cables rolled out to 93 per cent of Australian households. The rest will be served by a mixture of wireless and satellite internet.

Gary McLaren, chief technology officer for NBN Co, said the German breakthrough showed the NBN was future-proof.

"Tests such as this just go to show why a fibre-enabled National Broadband Network is the best infrastructure for Australia's future," he said.

"As fibre-optic technology improves, so too will speeds and the amount of data that can be carried over the network we are building today."