Virgin unveils 'world's fastest' cable broadband - Telegraph.co.uk

The real power of such speeds, however, is in more than home entertainment, despite the industry's force as a major employer. Improved broadband services, as the medical director of the NHS, Sir Bruce Keogh, recently pointed out, enable doctors to see patients remotely with a level of detail that really does allow some specialists to use services massively more efficient, either through eliminating travel costs or by bringing very sophisticated techniques to remote locations.

In the background, however, is Britain's struggling rural broadband network. Yet in Hull local provider KC Communications is wiring 15,000 homes up to its own superfast fibre network. The economics are tough, but it demonstrates, in the words of KC Chief Executive Kevin Walsh "we'll be able to meet the needs of the most bandwidth-hungry households today and in the future". Those demands will not all come from teenagers playing videogames.

There are, of course, some sceptics: envisaging a different NHS is a real challenge. Envisaging businesses that don't yet exist is harder still, especially without watching Star Trek. But as No 10's adviser Tim Kelsey said recently, even school reports are set to go online: experimental new trials are aimed at inspiring new approaches to existing problems. No wonder some commentators raise the prospect of a second industrial revolution.