Recently, I got a sneak preview of Internet 2.
The initiative is "a consortium by 207 universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 is recreating the partnership among academia, industry and government that fostered today´s Internet in its infancy." ((more info).
It's more than just really fast networking - it's focusing on building new applications for research and learning and enabling the spread of those applications to other quickly.
To maintain the speed- the network will never be available for the public. Instead, public groups may subscribe or tap information spawned by the network. The 10GB transfer speed is lighting fast, but we'll probably only see it through special partnerships with Higher Ed. institutions.
Well... we can dream?!
