Fibre tracks: explaining investment in fibre optic backbones

This paper examines the US portion of the global communications network known as the Internet. The stages in the Internet's evolution, telecommunications deregulation, and a rush by new competitors to new market opportunities associated with the Internet combined to prompt a flurry of investment in new fibre-optic networks. Frameworks to explain new networks built upon, and added to, existing telecommunications networks include network economies and the opportunity-rich paths located between the large markets on the east and west coasts of the country and a capital-driven set of new and old network suppliers. The paper then reviews the small but growing body of research on the geographic structure of the Internet. The empirical section of the paper focuses on analyses of the variation among urban areas both in bandwidth on interurban Internet backbone networks and in the number of web design firms in the USA. Bandwidth investment was attracted not only to cities with larger populations but also to cities with ‘knowledge economies’, indicated by doctoral degree-granting institutions and economic dynamism. The paper concludes with remarks about future research priorities.