Geographies of global telephony in the age of the internet

Abstract

This paper offers an overview of the massive regulatory, technological, and social changes that have reshaped the world's telephony markets since the rise of the internet. It begins by examining how neoliberalism has reworked the world's telecommunications markets, and then turns to the global wave of deregulation that this transformation has entailed. It then focuses on the geographies of mobile or cellular telephony, which exceeds traditional landlines by a factor of 10 and is having substantial impacts, particularly in the developing world. The fourth part delves into the rapidly expanding domain of Voice Over Internet (VOIP) telephony such as Skype, which comprises more than a quarter of the world's telephone traffic. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.