[superfast internet]

From the Times

"The internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.
At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.
The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.
David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.
The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates.

[...]

That network, in effect a parallel internet, is now built, using fibre optic cables
that run from Cern to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East,
Europe and around the world. One terminates at the Rutherford Appleton
laboratory at Harwell in Oxfordshire. From each centre, further connections
radiate out to a host of other research institutions using existing high-speed
academic networks. It means Britain alone has 8,000 servers on the grid
system – so that any student or academic will theoretically be able to hook up
to the grid rather than the internet from this autumn.

[...]

“Holographic video conferencing is not that far away. Online gaming could evolve to include many thousands of people, and social networking could become the main way we
communicate."