How a particular teleport develops, and even what form of teleport is envisioned for a specific region, depends critically upon the pattern of user needs and the local economic circumstances at the time of conception and during the early-build phase.

As described in Section 7.1 it is possible to define four basic forms: the telecom-port, the real-estate teleport, the intelligent city, and finally the most advanced concept of all the virtual teleport. Well into the third millennium it is entirely probable that the world will continue to see examples of each of these basic forms being established in various locations.

Further, it is important to appreciate that existing teleport projects will continue evolving so that projects that began as telecom-ports or real-estate teleports will become essentially intelligent cities.

Virtual teleports are different in that they virtually integrate existing advanced telecommunications infrastructures usually with some added value from introduced subsystems and services. Cities ripe for this form of development are always those that already have a sophisticated information infrastructure but not formally a teleport. Suitable cities could include Austin (Texas), Birmingham (United Kingdom), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Capetown (South Africa), Delhi (India), Denver (Colorado), Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Guangzhau (China, PRC), Hong Kong (China, PRC), Leeds (United Kingdom), Leningrad (Russia), Los Angeles (California), Madrid (Spain), San Diego (California), Singapore, Sydney (Australia), Stockholm (Sweden), Tel Aviv (Israel), Vancouver (Canada), and many more cities where the communications infrastructure is already advanced.

As the third millennium develops momentum, many cities in...