According to Minneapolis/St Paul Business Journal:

NASA chose Qwest Communications International Inc. for a $14.2 million contract to upgrade circuits for the space agency’s high-speed broadband network that handles email and computing applications.

The eight-year project is meant to boost NASA’s network speeds from 2.5 gigabits per second to 10 gigabits per second.

I think we ought to be looking at what NASA wants over the next 8 years when we are planning what the rest of us are going to need. We’re not all sending people to the moon – but this is one of the first predictions of what will be needed that I have seen where someone is putting their money where their mouth is. (And that someone would be the taxpayers here.)

Another interesting note from the article – AT&T, Qwest and Verizon are the only telecoms authorized to bid on the project.