Most certainly, which is why companies like Akamai exist. Akamai hosts web pages or portions of web pages (like heavy images or video, for example) for its clients on Akamai servers distributed all over the world.
In most cases these Akamai servers are closer to the end user (you) than the original server the end user wants to access--the one that belongs to the URL the end user (still you) types into the address bar. By delivering portions of the page to the end user that have been cached on the Akamai server instead of the original server the transit time can be faster, congestion and bottle necks can be avoided, and in the case of content being viewed by thousands--or even millions--of people simultaneously, can ease the bandwidth burden on those original servers by distributing the number of access points. And all of this more or less happens without the end user ever realizing where the content is actually coming from, though examining page code would give you a hint an intermediary is delivering the content to you instead of Apple or Facebook or the BBC or MTV to mention few clients that use Akamai servers.
And while information moving at the speed of light gets to you pretty fast--even from the other side of the world, those seconds and even milliseconds are becoming increasingly important to certain people. Recently a company called Spread Networks laid a fiberoptic cable from Chicago to New York for communication between traders. That cable is considered to be the straightest line-of-sight cable ever put down. It's said to be only 160 miles shorter than the competition. But those fewer miles creates a difference in information transit time that has allowed users of the cable to make money at the expense of users of the older system.
