Economic Geography

Telecommunications
The effect of communications on geography has been dramatic. For example,
Febvre and Martin (1976) titled an entire chapter in their treatise on the inno-
vation of the moveable-type printed book as The Book as a Force for Change. The
printed book increased the volume transmitted and, by lowering the cost of
reproduction, expanded the number of persons capable of accessing the knowl-
edge and information. But, more important, the accelerated circulation of infor-
mation, in the form of codified knowledge, sped the creation of new knowledge
and information, forming a virtuous circle of knowledge growth that continues
to this day. To illustrate, typeset books circulated the heretical views of Galileo
and Copernicus far more rapidly than hand copies of an original manuscript ever
could have.
Twenty-five years ago, telecommunications capacity was concentrated in the
developed nations. Phone calls to India, China, or even Mexico were expensive
and the quality of service was low or even extremely low. In the 1980s this began
to change as telecommunications was deregulated and there was increasing 
pressure for improved and lower cost service. With the construction of new 
fiber optics undersea cables during the Internet Bubble of the 1990s, a dynamic
of double-digit percentage price declines per annum for international service was
set in motion.
India is an excellent example of a formerly bandwidth poor nation whose
telecommunications infrastructure has improved dramatically. To illustrate, India’s
international submarine cable capacity grew from 31 gigabytes per second
(Gbps) in 2001 to 541 Gbps by the end of 2004. In China, the cost of interna-
tional service has plummeted to the point at which it was possible to buy tele-
phone cards offering United States to China calling for about $.03 per minute.
The final chapter is the coming voice-over-Internet-Protocol telephony that 
will create always-on connections priced at a low monthly fee. With this the cost
of transferring information long distance will no longer be significant. In this
respect the prediction ‘death of distance’ is being fulfilled (Cairncross 1997).
Telecommunications linkages, capacity, and cost will no longer be a significant
differentiator in providing workers protection from competition. Moreover, the
rapidity with which service can be provided means that any part of the world having
customers willing to pay for bandwidth or workers who can be profitably integrated
into the global economy will receive service. Of course, the telecommunications
Digitizing services
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networks transmit data and information, they do not create knowledge nor can
they easily transmit tacit knowledge. Even seeing a person during a teleconference
is not the same as in-person interaction, which provides the multi-channeled
analog information coming from the person and the context. What the telecom-
munications networks do provide is an increased ability to share explicit knowledge
and information.
The changing organizational and technical aspects of transportation and
communication networks have provided enormous impetus to the expansion of
the economy especially in terms of integrating labor into the global economy.
The impacts of this expansion upon manufacturing workers is already well
known. However, the most recent changes in the telecommunications infrastruc-
ture is now threatening to have a similar impact on service work, not only at the
low end in tasks such as data entry, but even more interestingly on high-end serv-
ice and research and development (R&D) jobs. The implications of this are
examined in the next section.