Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy UC Berkeley Title: The Building of the Internet: Implications for the Future of Broadband Networks Author: Hart, Jeffrey A., Department of Political Science, Indiana University Reed, Robert R., Department of Political Science, Indiana University Bar, Francois, Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy Publication Date: 08-28-1992 Series: Recent Work Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1rn0179h Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. The Building of the Internet: Implications for the Future of Broadband Networks by Jeffrey A. Hart Department of Political Science Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 Internet:
[email protected] Robert R. Reed Department of Political Science Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 Internet:
[email protected] and Francois Bar Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 Internet:
[email protected] August 28, 1992 This paper appeared in _Telecommunications Policy_, November 1992 (Vol. 16, No. 8), and has been nominated for the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center's 1993 Communications Policy Research Award. ABSTRACT The rapid growth of traffic on the Internet, a loosely organized system of interconnected computer networks, suggests a bright fu- ture for switched broadband telecommunications. It also suggests that the path to that future is more likely to involve a broaden- ing of access to broadband networks to users in offices, fac- tories, schools, and homes rather than the transmission of enter- tainment video (high definition or otherwise) via the telephone and cable networks.