Friday, March 13, 2009 at 12:37PM | in World Development The world is one network
I just came across these fascinating maps over at the Bottom Billion blog, which features the work of Paul Collier. It was posted to illustrate how Africa was underserved by early telegraph networks, just as it is undernetworked with fibre optic cable now. But I thought it provided a neat snapshot of the physical growth of our connectivity over the past 150 years.
1855: World Telegraph Lines
1901: Telegraph Lines
2009: World Fibre Optic
1855: World Telegraph Lines
1901: Telegraph Lines
2009: World Fibre Optic
Friday, March 13, 2009 at 12:37PM | in World Development 
Reader Comments (4)
thanks for sharing - I love maps too! Not sure it's fair to conclude Africa is underserved ... look at its coastline. Look at the rest of Canada! It would be more interesting to see the impact of cellphones and satellines because I believe wireless internet will continue to make the world smaller very quickly, so that remote areas can be equally served.
True enough. I've just put up cell phone use in Africa. Pretty impressive. I don't think they're using 3G networks though, and the internet still relies upon physical cable.
PS ... here's a GSM coverage map that shows Africa doing a bit better!
http://www.coveragemaps.com/gsmposter_world.htm (this is a link to the website; the map itself is 27MB - which is another issue!)
Thanks for the link.
Actually many places in Africa now have 3G and even 3.5G mobile internet connectivity, especially in and around the capitals. For example in Accra, Ghana since Dec last year Zain and now MTN have launched 3.5G services of up to 14.4Mbit/s. That's more impressive than we can get in the UK (for now at least). These speeds are partly contingent on good external undersea fibre (present in W.Africe but still absent in most of E.Africa). It's also driven by the fact that mobile penetration is around 50% in Ghana, compared to <5% computer based internet access.