Techno-Industrial Innovation and State Policies in the United States and Japan

The telecommunications sector and telecommunications policy have become salient political issues in the past five years. All governments in the industrialised countries have seen telecommunications as a channel for the improvement of innovation. Yet with its origins in the telegraph, by the late 1970s domestic telecommunications had become a mature, primarily voice oriented, sector. Slow depreciation of network equipment, often over twenty or more years, necessary to keep prices down for individual consumers, held back the introduction of expensive new technology.