ABSTRACT
The United States, Britain and Japan were the first nations to shift towards competition in the early 1980s; increasingly, all western nations are finding it impossible not to do so because of the risk of business disinvestment and poor competitiveness in this key sector. Pressures from international business interests to deliver and benefit from a global, commercialised marketplace in telematics are becoming increasingly powerful. John Sale, a network strategist for Rank Xerox, summarises the approach of TNCs and their lobbying for more liberalisation in continental Europe, where shifts away from the PTT monopolies have been relatively slow. He admits that his company’s ‘position is that if you don’t allow it in [continental] Europe, we will build it in the U.S. or get the permission to do it in the U.K.’ (quoted in Schenker, 1994; 12). National political movements towards neoliberalism are also pushing privatised and marketised regimes of telecommunications regulation as the route towards faster innovation and national economic competitiveness in these vital infrastructures. Supranational bodies such as the European Union, the G7 and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) are also becoming powerful advocates of global, liberalised markets in communications and telematics services.
