ABSTRACT
Economic pressures also played a role in supporting the changes recommended in the Maitland report. Increasingly, foreign investors were giving greater weight to communications facilities when making decisions. Moreover, the increasingly competitive environment in Meganet communications gave investors new choices. Asia's Meganet prospects depend mainly on the three regional giants: Japan, China, and India. Japan's postwar role has been that of an exporter of both capital and manufactured goods. More recently, Japan has raised its economic profile through strategic control of technology throughout the region, with an emphasis on telecommunications and information technology. The most intriguing aspect of China's Meganet buildup is its potential for weakening the government's grip on information, which has sustained communist rule for fifty years. India will rely increasingly on a mix of public and private resources, reacting to economic needs but also to pressures from an expanding middle class for telephones and other Meganet services.
