ABSTRACT
Overseas, Meganet's builders are the government agencies that have controlled local electronic communications for more than a century, beginning with the telegraph. A European community survey in the 1970s of West European electronics industries warned of the extent of this foreign invasion. It pointed out that European companies accounted for only 15 percent of global trade in telecommunications goods and services. At the same time, British telecom allied itself with Viag, one of Germany's top-ten industrial groups, to offer voice and data services to national and international companies. These moves assure that Deutsche Telekom will face heavy competition in the race to build Germany's part of Meganet. On the other side of the globe, the Japanese are building Meganet resources in their own way. Japan was among the first countries to recognize the importance of making the transition from an industrialized society to an information-based, postindustrial model.
