Emergence of a 'poor man's broadband' ?

NewScientistTech has an article on how students in Pakistan will soon be able to download big files faster by avoiding the internet:

Instead of using expensive broadband or slow, unreliable dial-up connections, students at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) will try out a new system, dubbed "poor man's broadband" (PMB). It allows computers to link to each other directly for faster downloads, and it works as long as at least one computer running the trial software has already downloaded the desired file from the internet. The system should also reduce the university's risk of overloading the bandwidth supplied by its internet service providers (ISPs).

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