The federal High Performance Computing Act of 1991 aimed for a gigabit per second (Gbps) national backbone by 1995. Five federally-funded testbed networks are currently demonstrating various gigabit approaches. To get a feel for how fast a gigabit per second is, note that most small colleges or universities today have 56 Kbps Internet connections. At 56 Kbps it takes about five hours to transmit one gigabit!
Efforts to develop integrated services networks also have exploded.
Several cable companies have already started offering Internet
connections to their customers.
ATT, MCI and all of
the ``Baby Bell'' operating companies are involved in mergers and
joint ventures with cable TV and other specialized network providers
to deliver new integrated services such as video-on-demand. ATM-based
networks, although initially developed for phone systems, ironically
have been first implemented for data networks within corporations and
by some regional and backbone providers.