In the USA many of the universities in California are becoming disgruntled by the commercial services that are spreading on the Internet, which are eating up the bandwidth and they are considering rebuilding new high speed local networks to connect universities in their area. Similar plans are being brought forward in Arizona, Chicago, and North Carolina. The notion is that a new network specifically for research and education will be born. In fact there are three different projects in existence. Given the fact that Startrek is so popular and that NGI is a snappier more humourous name than I2, I would bet a pound to a penny that it is NGI that will catch the imagination, regardless of its merits or organisation.
Life is like that.
There is a position paper on the vBNS, as well as a clickable map . At the present time only the universities in the USA are participating in the I2 project, however the Canadians have formed their own parallel project with network connections being handled through Chicago. At the moment the I2 project does not have any policies regarding international collaboration or connections. Here are some references to position papers which have been presented before congress on the 13th June 1997. They are in the form of a slide presentation so they could come in handy if you need to persuade some offical that there is a desperate need for a new research and education network here in Europe.