Backbone Topology, Access, and the Commercial Internet, 1997–2000

Morton E O'Kelly and Tony Grubesic

Environment and Planning B, 2002, vol. 29, issue 4, 533-552

Abstract: As the Internet grows in popularity, telecommunications infrastructure in the United States continues to increase in capacity and geographic reach to meet market demand. Important components of this infrastructure include the commercial fiber-optic backbones used to transport digital information between locations. The spatial organization of commercial Internet backbones reflects an increasingly competitive privatized market for service provision, in which certain locations are more accessible and better connected than others. The authors have three objectives. First, they explore the current state of the telecommunications industry, paying special attention to current trends, mergers, and new company business models. Second, they use a standardized methodology to examine the topological structure of the US commercial Internet and the resulting differences in city accessibility. Third, this methodology is put to the test by an exploration of an empirical database of 41 network providers in the United States. Results suggest that significant changes in city accessibility to the commercial Internet occurred between 1997 and 2000.

Date: 2002
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/b12829 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:29:y:2002:i:4:p:533-552

DOI: 10.1068/b12829

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning B
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().