Thanks to Martin for sticking up for poorly funded academic researchers!

The analysis was originally carried out in Spring 2003 for the ESPON
telecoms project, at which stage data from Q3 2001 seemed quite reasonable
(although as we do point out in the paper, many provider networks present in
the data had already changed), and was the best we could find in any case.
Obviously two years down the line, things have moved on. But I think one of
our main points in the paper remains relevant - the continuing importance of
national territories as structuring elements in European network development
(which is a crucial difference to US backbone deployments). Which fits with
Philippe's comment about the role of 'serious national backbones'...

If anybody has more up-to-date concrete information (or data) about recent
network developments in Europe, we'll be glad to hear about it.

Internet Exchange Points were briefly discussed (again due to limited data)
in chapter 5 of our second interim report for ESPON.

Regards,
Jon

Jonathan Rutherford,
Postdoctorant / Postdoctoral Research Fellow,
Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés (LATTS),
Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC),
6-8 avenue Blaise Pascal,
F-77455 Marne-la-Vallée cedex 2,
France.
Tél: +33 (0)1.64.15.38.30
Mobile: +44(0)7971 023721
Fax: +33 (0)1.64.15.36.00
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://latts.cnrs.fr/
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "martin dodge" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: [MAPPING-CYBERSPACE] Territoriality of Pan-European
Telecommunications Backbone Networks


> On Thu, 17 Feb 2005, Philippe Bourcier wrote:
>
> Hi, I take your point on the speed on change, but I think you are being a
> bit unfair on the authors. Given the limited resources in academic
> research projects I think they have pulled together some useful empirical
> analysis. My sense is that it is actually getting harder to get detailed
> statistical data on network infrastructures .....
>
> Further details are given in the official project reports, posted here
>
>
http://www.espon.lu/online/documentation/projects/thematic/thematic_18.html
>
> Some might also want to check out Jonathan Rutherford's book (coming out
> of his phd research) called "A Tale of Two Global Cities:Comparing the
> Territorialities of Telecommunications Developments in Paris and London"
>
https://www.ashgate.com/shopping/title.asp?key1=&key2=&orig=results&isbn=0%207546%203474%204
>
> cheers
> martin
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > >Hi, I just came across this paper. Looks like some useful empirical
> > >analysis from CURDS researchers. It also makes a change from US centric
> > >internet analysis.
> >
> > The paper was published in March 2004, but I think it would have been
much
> > more interesting (and accurate) if the analysis was done with more
recent
> > fiber maps/data (those used in this paper are dated Q3 2001).
> >
> > European backbone networks have radically changed the last 2-3 years
while
> > Voice, Data and Video is definitely converging over IP/DSL.
> > The race for high bandwidth DSL (ADSL2+) dramatically changed the fiber
maps.
> >
> > For example, there's much more to be analysed on the inter-urban side
than
> > before.
> > When you offer 8 Mb/s to the home, you need a serious (10 to 40 Gb/s)
> > "national backbone" (5 to 20 biggest cities) to handle the traffic.
> > I believe the part about "regional presence of a urban node" is no more
> > true in most Western European countries involved in the high bandwidth
race.
> >
> > This is quite interesting because it's not (yet) the case in Eastern
Europe
> > countries, so by studying the differences and how EU networks are
growing,
> > a kind of "economic and geostrategic model" could emerge. This model
could
> > allowing the "prediction" of the approximate date a specific place
should
> > get access to 512 Kb/s ... 1024... based on its location, population and
> > economy.
> >
> > Something else which was a bit neglected in the paper is the (important)
> > role of IXs (Internet Exchange points) in EU.
> > This role (ie: number of prefixes passing through) is (IMHO) more
important
> > to analyse if you want to make useful statistics about important cities
for
> > Internet in EU than the aggregate bandwidth.
> >
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Philippe Bourcier
> >
>
> _________________________________________________________________________
>
> martin dodge
>
> cyber geography research
> centre for advanced spatial analysis, university college london
> gower street, london, wc1e 6bt, united kingdom
>
> email: [log in to unmask] (remove the nospam bit)
>
> http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk       http://www.cybergeography.org
> __________________________________________________________________________
>