Transport and Communication(part 2)

 Transport and Communication(part 2)

AIR TRANSPORT

Air transport is the fastest means of transportation, but it is very costly. Being fast, it is preferred by passengers for long-distance travel. Valuable cargo can be moved rapidly on a world-wide scale. It is often the only means to reach inaccessible areas. Air transport has brought about a connectivity revolution in the world. The frictions created by mountainous snow fields or inhospitable desert terrains have been overcome. The accessibility has increased. The airplane brings varied articles to the Eskimos in Northern Canada unhindered by the frozen ground. In the Himalayan region, the routes are often obstructed due to landslides, avalanches or heavy snow fall. At such times, air travel is the only alternative to reach a place. Airways also have great strategic importance. The air strikes by U.S. and British forces in Iraq bears testimony to this fact. The airways network is expanding very fast.

The manufacturing of aircrafts and their operations require elaborate infrastructure like hangars, landing, fuelling, and maintenance facilities for the aircrafts. The construction of airports is also very expensive and has developed more in highly industrialised countries where there is a large volume of traffic.

At present no place in the world is more than 35 hours away. This startling fact has been made possible due to people who build and fly airplanes. Travel by air can now be measured by hours and minutes instead of years and months. Frequent air services are available to many parts of the world. Although, U.K. pioneered the use of commercial jet transport, U.S.A. developed largely post-War international civil aviation. Today, more than 250 commercial airlines offer regular services to different parts of the world. Recent developments can change the future course of air transport. Supersonic aircraft, cover the distance between London and New York within three and a half hours. 

Inter-Continental Air Routes 

In the Northern Hemisphere, there is a distinct east-west belt of inter-continental air routes. Dense network exists in Eastern U.S.A., Western Europe and Southeast Asia. U.S.A. alone accounts for 60 per cent of the airways of the world. New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt Rome, Moscow, Karachi, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago are the nodal points where air routes converge or radiate to all continents. 

Africa, Asiatic part of Russia and South America lack air services. There are limited air services between 10-35 latitudes in the Southern hemisphere due to sparser population, limited landmass and economic development.

PIPELINES 

Pipelines are used extensively to transport liquids and gases such as water, petroleum and natural gas for an uninterrupted flow. Water supplied through pipelines is familiar to all. Cooking gas or LPG is supplied through pipelines in many parts of the world. Pipelines can also be used to transport liquidified coal. In New Zealand, milk is being supplied through pipelines from farms to factories.

In U.S.A. there is a dense network of oil pipelines from the producing areas to the consuming areas. Big Inch is one such famous pipeline, which carries petroleum from the oil wells of the Gulf of Mexico to the North-eastern States. About 17 per cent of all freight per tonne-km. is carried through pipelines in U.S.A.

In Europe, Russia, West Asia and India pipelines are used to connect oil wells to refineries, and to ports or domestic markets. Turkmenistan is central Asia has extended pipelines to Iran and also to parts of China.

The proposed Iran-India via Pakistan international oil and natural gas pipeline will be the longest in the world.

COMMUNICATIONS  

Human beings have used different methods long-distance communications of which the telegraph and the telephone were important. The telegraph was instrumental in the colonisation of the American West. During the early and mid-twentieth century, the American Telegraph and Telephone Company (AT&T) enjoyed a monopoly over U.S.A.’s telephone industry. In fact, the telephone became a critical factor in the urbanisation of America. Firms centralised their functioning at cityheadquarters and located their branch offices in smaller towns. Even today, the telephone is the most commonly used mode. In developing countries, the use of cell phones, made possible by satellites, is important for rural connectivity. 

Today there is a phenomenal pace of development. The first major breakthrough is the use of optic fiber cables (OFC). Faced with mounting competition, telephone companies all over the world soon upgraded their copper cable systems to include optic fiber cables. These allow large quantities of data to be transmitted rapidly, securely, and are virtually error-free. With the digitisation of information in the 1990s, telecommunication slowly merged with computers to form integrated networks termed as Internet.

Satellite Communication

Today Internet is the largest electronic network on the planet connecting about 1,000 million people in more than 100 countries.

Communication through satellites emerged as a new area in communication technology since the 1970s after U.S.A. and former U.S.S.R. pioneered space research. Artificial satellites, now, are successfully deployed in the earth’s orbit to connect even the remote corners of the globe with limited onsite verification. These have rendered the unit cost and time of communication invariant in terms of distance. This means it costs the same to communicate over 500 km as it does over 5,000 km via satellite.

India has also made great strides in satellite development. Aryabhatt was launched on 19 April 1979, Bhaskar-I in 1979 and Rohini in 1980. On 18 June 1981, APPLE (Arian Passenger Payload Experiment) was launched through Arian rocket. Bhaskar,Challenger and INSAT I-B have made longdistance communication, television and radio very effective. Today weather forecasting through television is a boon.

Cyber Space – Internet 

Cyberspace is the world of electronic computerised space. It is encompassed by the Internet such as the World Wide Web (www). In simple words, it is the electronic digital world for communicating or accessing information over computer networks without physical movement of the sender and the receiver... It is also referred to as the Internet. Cyberspace exists everywhere. It may be in an office, sailing boat, flying plane and virtually anywhere. 

The speed at which this electronic network has spread is unprecedented in human history. There were less than 50 million Internet users in 1995, about 400 million in 2000 A.D. and over two billion in 2010. In the last few years there has been a shift among global users from U.S.A. to the developing countries. The percentage share of U.S.A. has dropped from 66 in 1995 to only 25 in 2005. Now the majority of the world’s users are in U.S.A., U.K., Germany, Japan, China and India. 

 As billions use the Internet each year, cyberspace will expand the contemporary economic and social space of humans through e-mail, e-commerce, e-learning and e-governance. Internet together with fax, television and radio will be accessible to more and more people cutting across place and time. It is these modern communication systems, more than transportation, that has made the concept of global village a reality.