Government funded research to make Internet 100 times faster

The project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), brings together scientists from the University of Southampton and the University of Essex with industry partners, including BBC. R&D will examine the way fibre optics are used, and develop new materials and devices. Announcing the investment during a visit to open the University of Southampton's Mountbatten Building, where much of the research will be conducted, Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts said: "The number of broadband subscribers has grown vastly in the past 10 years. We need to ensure the web infrastructure can continue to meet this demand." And he added: "On top of this, the Internet industry is worth an estimated £100 billion in the UK, so it is in our interest to make it even better for businesses and help boost economic growth." Willetts believes that the Photonics HyperHighway project has the potential to revolutionise the Internet, making it much faster and more energy-efficient. Meanwhile, professor David Payne, of the University of Southampton, who is leading the Photonics HyperHighway project, comments: "Now is the time to look ahead to develop the UK infrastructure of the future. "Our ambition is nothing less than to rebuild the internet hardware to suit it to the needs of 21st-century Britain." "Traffic on the global communications infrastructure continues to increase 80% year-on-year. This is driven by rapidly expanding and increasingly demanding applications, such as internet television services and new concepts like cloud computing. What this project proposes is a radical transformation of the physical infrastructure that underpins these networks."