ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the origins of the United States (US) policy of global monopoly, the manner in which it was implemented, and the growing network of long-distance satellite communication systems. The US plan of the 1960s was to create a single global system providing satellite communications for the world at large. The more industrialized nations, and some of the not so industrialized nations, have also created domestic satellite communication systems, some of which carry interregional traffic. The developing countries wanted International Telecommunications Satellite Organizations major policy-making organ to take a form similar to that of the General Assembly of the United Nations, in which each member country had the right to be represented and each had one vote. The first domestic satellite communications company, Telesat Canada, was incorporated by the Canadian parliament in 1969. In 1972, Canada placed Anik, the world’s first geosynchronous domestic satellite, into geostationary orbit.
