| This study examines the geographic structure of the global Internet connectivity using international backbone linkages among 72 cities in 46 countries. To test the questions about the concentrated structure of the global communication networks, three types of inter-urban communication networks, the Internet backbone, the air passengers, and the air mail networks, were analyzed and compared. A series of measures on the linkages, capacity, and positional topology of electronic and non-electronic communication networks clearly showed that the Internet backbone had a structural similarity to air transport network, but had a more concentrated and hierarchical structure. The U.S. played a role as a global switching office. East Coastal Cities (New York and Washington, DC) were gateways to European connections, West Coastal Cities (Los Angeles and San Francisco) to the Asia-pacific, and Southern Cities (Miami, Dallas, Houston) to Latin America. Among the triad, the U.S. East and European cluster showed the most central positioning in the hierarchy of global Internet connectivity. Without the high capacity backbone bandwidth, most of the information flows between cities in the Asia-Pacific and cities in Europe were bridged by the hub cities in the United States. The implications on infrastructure concentration and global digital divide were discussed. |
