ABSTRACT
The role of telecommunications from an Inter-American perspective has been influenced both by the historical ties between the United States, Canada and the countries of Central and South America, as well as the importance of telecommunications systems to the functioning of the state since the invention of each medium to the present. The power of the US model, and reliance on its technological lead, particularly in adapting new technologies, was strong across the Americas overall, causing some 19th century leaders to turn to the US for telegraphy and telephony as they developed. Nationalization, linked to rising nationalism from the 1930s on, began to create tensions with the idea of foreign ownership, particularly in strategic areas such as telecommunications. The process of privatization, liberalization, and de-regulation in the Americas gathered steam, seeming to become almost inevitable, because of both national pressure to expand telecom services and global ideological pressure from the Washington Consensus.
