Currently being implemented by TelstraClear throughout New Zealand, this Multi-Gigabit Advanced Research Network certainly sounds very interesting indeed. From a technical aspect, this network will be capable of delivering phenomenal speeds & providing Scientists, Research Facilities, Universities & Hospitals with seemingly unlimited bandwidth.

Information of what this network can/will deliver can be found here:

TelstraClear Media Release

Advanced Network Backgrounder


Exerpt from the above link:

"How fast will the Advanced Network be and why does speed matter so much?

Today a typical research institution, such as a University, will have a 100Mbit/sec connection to the commodity internet. This connection will be shared by many hundreds of users. An individual researcher would be very lucky to maintain a data flow to the desktop of 1Mbit/sec for the 22 hours it would take to transfer 10Gbytes of data. The goal of the AN is to be able to deliver 100Mbit/sec or more to the desktop of an individual researcher. This would allow the 10Gbytes of data to be delivered in 13minutes. To achieve this the AN will deliver at least 1Gbit/sec to larger research institutions, in most cases using optical fibre. Backbone speeds are expected to exceed 40 Gigabit/sec on the network within a few years. At these speeds it is essential that the optical transmission technology economics that underlie such a network are accessible to the AN - not distorted by commercial business retail models which price bandwidth on a different basis.
Speed and low latency (delay) are crucial because these both have a direct bearing on the most efficient movement of massive data sets, or how well complex, multi-site, interactive applications will run. This is particularly important for international collaboration where additional latency caused by non-optimum network arrangements could hamper network performance."