Mitchell L. Moss and Anthony M. Townsend
Despite the rapid growth of advanced telecommunications services, there is a
lack of knowledge about the geographic diffusion of these new technologies.
The Internet presents an important challenge to communications researchers,
as it threatens to redefine the production and delivery of vital services including
finance, retailing, and education. This paper seeks to address the gap in the
current literature by analyzing the development of Internet backbone networks
in the United States between 1997 and 1999. We focus upon the inter-metropolitan
links that have provided transcontinental data transport services since the
demise of the federally subsidized networks deployed in the 1970’s and
1980’s. We find that a select group of seven highly inter-connected metropolitan
areas consistently dominated the geography of national data networks despite
massive investment in this infrastructure over the study period. Furthermore,
while prosperous and internationally-oriented American cities lead the nation
in adopting and deploying Internet technologies, interior regions and economically
distressed cities have failed to keep up. As information-based industries and
services account for an increasing share of economic activity, this evidence
suggests that the Internet may aggravate the economic disparities between regions,
rather than level them. Although the capacity of the backbone system has slowly
diffused throughout the metropolitan system, the geographic structure of interconnecting
links has changed little. Finally, the continued persistence of the metropolis
as the center for telecommunications networks illustrates the need for a more
sophisticated understanding of the interaction between societies and technological
innovations.