Brussels aims to make "scientific collaboration (across the world) seamless and straightforward", in the words of the Information Society commissioner. In a move towards this, the world's largest super computer network, dubbed 'GEANT', is to go global.
The European Commission is investing a further 90 million euros in the project dedicated to research and education. Europe's GEANT already connects 34 national research networks.
In Brussels, a senior figure involved, Dy Davis, tries to convey the speed of data transmission promised: "The main exciting change in terms of GEANT was the sheer capacity of the network. You have heard about the speed of light. Well, if you captured the speed of light in fibre you can have the capacity of light. We have taken and acquired dark fibre for our routes across Europe, and taken it and lit it, and that gives us the potential for transmitting a billion billion bits a second."
High-speed links will be established with infrastructures in the Balkans, Black Sea and Mediterranean regions, Asia, Southern Africa and Latin America. In Europe, GEANT has enabled ground-breaking collaboration in fields such as climate change, radio astronomy and biotechnology.
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