ESTIMATING THE COST OF A TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK USING THE FRACTALSTRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN-POPULATION DISTRIBUTION

Results are presented which exploit the strong scale-invariant structu re present in the spatial distributions of the populations of Great Br itain and the United States to estimate the cost of star networks to s erve these populations. The costs of the network components are modell ed as affine functions of the capacities of the components. The main a pplication for this work is to assist in making decisions in the desig n and choice of network components on a national scale.