How did the NSF get involved?
This collaboration resulted in several upgrades to the NSFNET backbone.
1989 - upgrade to "T1", providing data transmissions at a rate of 1.5 million bits of data per second. This is roughly the equivalent of 50 pages of text per second.
1993 - upgrade to "T3", providing data transmissions at a rate of 45 million bits of data per second. This is roughly the equivalent of 1400 pages of text per second.