One of the questions that comes up repeatedly is about the genuinely new applications that very high speed (eg gigabit) networks can enable, as opposed to the role of these networks in just aggregating large numbers of much slower individual connections. Not only is this a critical issue in networking within the research and education community, but the question  is at the heart of many policy discussions about broadband to the home (and what constitutes sufficiently broadband connectivity). It is also linked to closely to some of the questions that the American Library Association has explored about the need for high-speed connections supporting public libraries.

This recent blog post  on the very helpful computing community consortium offers a very interesting list of some example applications:

http://www.cccblog.org/2014/04/01/top-10-gigabit-apps/

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI