Development Outlook of Communication Geography: Trends, Meta-Tasks, New Networks

Abstract

The article generalizes the global experience of research on communication geography with the goal to identify future directions of study of the spatial and temporal deployment and functioning of telecommunications networks. An original algorithm of semantic search for publications in bibliographic databases has returned about 400 articles on communication geography published in 1981–2020 in scientific journals worldwide. An analysis of these publications shows that six types of communications: fiber-optic, mobile, telephone, postal, telegraph, and satellite—have been studied within infrastructural, statistical, impact, streaming, and optimization directions of communication geography. Trends are identified using the methods of the moving average and bi-proportional indices. Linear extrapolation of trends in the number of publications by type of communications and by research directions suggests that in the future preference will be given to geographical study of fiber-optic and mobile networks within infrastructural and statistical approaches with the objective to optimize the line-nodal structure. Based on a comparative analysis of unsolved problems, it is established that the priority in future research should be given to the following meta-tasks: transferring the experience of geographical study of a given type of communications to other types; using big data of telecom operators for geographical analysis of the functioning of networks; transitioning from descriptive to constructive communication geography; identifying geographical patterns for deployment of telecommunication networks, and developing the concept of a territory telecommunications complex. The following research objects are identified as promising: machine-to-machine information exchange networks, 6G mobile communication networks, and multifunctional networks.