This made me think of now-defunct @Home from a few hundred years ago. Wasn't their architectured premised on the notion of caching massive quantities of data out to the edge of the network in order to circumvent the architectural shortcoming of packet networks for streaming and other high bandwidth content?

Bit Torrent looks like a possible solution as well, but perhaps not necessarily a silver bullet for streaming content as opposed to simple downloaded stuff.

ABC experiment faces infrastructure problems – Financial Times – MSNBC.com However, streaming video, which relies on delivering "bits" of data to viewers in real time, has exposed weaknesses in the fundamental design of the Internet, which is based on being able to send data through a series of "hops" across the network between two distant computers.