Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and Natural Resources 2023 number 4

This article is devoted to the generalization of the world experience of research on communication geography in order to define future directions of studying the spatial and temporal deployment and functioning of telecommunications networks. The author’s semantic search algorithm for publications in bibliographic databases is used to reveal about 400 articles on communication geography published during 1981-2020 in scientific journals of all countries. An analysis of these publications showed that six types of communication (fiber-optic, mobile, telephone, postal, telegraph and satellite communications) were studied within the framework of infrastructural, statistical, impact, streaming and optimization directions of communication the geography. The methods of moving average and bi-proportional indices were used to identify trends. Linear extrapolation of trends in the number of publications by type of communication and scientific directions suggested that in the future preference will be given to the geographical study of fiber-optic and mobile networks within the framework of infrastructural and statistical approaches in an effort to optimize the line-nodal structure. Based on a comparative analysis of unsolved problems, it is established that in the future, first of all, it is necessary to solve the following meta-tasks: transferring the experience of geographical study of one type of communication to other types; using «big data» of telecom operators for geographical analysis of the functioning of networks; the transition from descriptive to constructive communication geography; identification of geographical patterns for deployment of telecommunication networks, and the development of a territorial telecommunications complex concept. A network of machine-to-machine information exchange, a 6G mobile communication network and a multifunctional network are identified as promising objects of research.