I am a member of a local LUG (Linux User Group) here in Anchorage. We meet on Friday niights for a hands on lab session self support etc.
One comment about bandwidth around the LUG: 'never under stimater the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes' This is a paraphrase of an old saying , hence the tape refernce?
The poin being, transfering large data sets can be accomplished by loading up the old auto and driving them, locally, seems like you could also mail a hard drive, USB stick somwhere in a timely fashion.