London bids to be top web city

Since the birth of the Net, the US has been regarded as the global hub of Internet traffic, but new research indicates this is changing. A study by Washington DC-based telecom research company TeleGeography has revealed only five of the Top Ten 'Internet cities' are American. Four are European, with London at number two, and one is in Asia. And, startlingly, of the top four cities, only one is in the US, with the rest in Europe.

The cities were ranked according to how much Internet capacity links them to other areas of the world.

'Around the world, it is becoming less necessary to transit the US to get e-mail or Web pages between neighbouring countries,' says Bram Abramson, TeleGeography's director of Internet research. 'To communicate between places, the US is still the main switching station but we can now see a clearly-established trend away from this.'

telegeography.com