Despite satellite technology, global communication heavily relies on undersea cables to keep people connected. “A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean.” (Wikipedia) Undersea cables are the backbone of the internet, so that being connected determines a region’s ability to participate in global communication flows.
The following cartogram shows data from Greg’s Cable Map reprojected onto an equal population projection, giving a perspective of how people rather than land areas are connected to the global communications infrastructure. Landing points where the cables connect to land are marked as red dots in the map, while the background also shows very faded shipping lanes (over sea) as well as the gridded cartogram projection (over land):
Tag Archives: communication
Global Mobile Phone Users: A Decade of Changes
A global shift in predominance of mobile/cell phone ownership in the last decade has seen low-income countries reach near ubiquitous levels. Using 11 years of compiled census data from each country worldwide, Andrew Bastawrous, Iain Livingstone and I analysed the global picture of cell phone ownership and used density-equalizing cartograms to depict this change. This cartogram animation shows a decade of change in the use of mobile phones:
