The company operates over a million miles of fiber and cable that deliver internet to 31.5 million homes and businesses. That means that for any piece of data to travel from Point A to Point B, there’s a near infinite number of combinations, said Elad Nafshi, Comcast’s chief network officer.
Data going into New York for example, could travel along the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel or the Amtrak train tracks, he said. And the fastest route also depends on other factors like, if there’s a fiber cut somewhere or a big surge of data into New York while everyone streams the Giants game.
Being able to calculate, in real time, all those variables to determine the optimal flow of data and deliver it at the fastest speeds for the highest number of people is something conventional computers struggle with. But, “that’s something that Quantum could do extremely well,” Nafshi said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/heres-how-quantum-computing-could-change-the-world-c7a995b1
This recalls the Cold War origins of the Internet. It was designed as ARPANET in the 1960s by the U.S. Department of Defense to provide a computerized governmental communication network that was self healing -- meaning it could automatically route around metro areas destroyed by nuclear weapon attacks.
Here, it is routing around network congestion.
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