Telecommunications and information networks: Growing international tensions and their underlying causes

Abstract

This article explores the growing international tensions over information networks and the conflict related to the underlying telecommunications networks that lies at the heart of the matter. Telecommunications policy and practice is changing significantly in many countries and at the international level. Tensions and conflict are identified as taking place on four levels: conflict over underlying values, conflict between and among different industry groups, political conflict among nations, and an emerging trade politics related to the application of services trade principles and rules to telecommunications and information services. These levels of tension/conflict should not be treated as distinct and mutually exclusive, but rather as overlapping and interactive, emphasizing the complex and increasingly serious nature of this important issue.     

Universal Service from the Bottom Up: A Study of Telephone Penetration in Camden, New Jersey

Ethnographic methods and geographic information systems were used to investigate the extent, causes and consequences of telephone disconnection in Camden, NJ. The results have significant implications for public policies intended to promote universal telephone penetration. Universal service is usually perceived as an issue for rural areas and the elderly, but the most extensive pockets of low telephone penetration are found in inner cities, where the problem is associated with the young, the transient, and ethnic minorities. The basic monthly rate paid by subscribers is usually thought to be the most important factor affecting affordability, but the data suggest that most marginal users are driven off the network by usage-related costs, and more generally by the problem of credit-worthiness. Given prevailing consumption patterns in low-income urban areas, 'electronic redlining' seems less of a threat than that poor Americans will, upon exposure to the advanced features of the national information infrastructure (NII), buy services that they cannot afford. Intellectuals and policy analysts value telephone service more than cable television service, but residents of inner cities frequently do not agree with this evaluation. In reformulating universal service policy, we must take account of the growing heterogeneity of telecommunications services, and keep in mind the importance of credit risk as a factor affecting the public's ability to access and use telecommunication networks.     

Socioeconomic Implications of Telecommunications Liberalization: India in the International Context

Telecommunications restructuring have evolved differently in Asia and Latin America. While Asian governments have moved cautiously in bringing changes to the sector, Latin American nations have implemented radical ownership and market transformations. The Indian telecommunications reform falls in between these two general regional trends. The choice of a high component of competition, increased private participation, and no privatization of the national carrier set conditions that will trigger unique socioeconomic effects. This article identifies and highlights the likely implications of the Indian reform on key economic and social issues, such as the cost of services, cross-subsidies, network interconnection, private investments, universal services, employment, and the possible rise of an information-intensive economy. It does so by comparing and contrasting the Indian experience with dominant reform strategies elsewhere in the developing world.     

通借通还系统设计与实现

概括了当前图书馆开展通借通还服务工作的现状,结合现有的图书馆管理系统,以南京邮电大学图书馆通借通还系统的开发实践为例,从系统流程、系统功能、模式选择、技术实现等几个方面介绍了实现通借通还服务的系统方法。     

On the Move: Technology, Mobility, and the Mediation of Social Time and Space

The current explosion in mobile computing and telecommunications technologies holds the potential to transform "everyday" time and space, as well as changes to the rhythms of social institutions. Sociologists are only just beginning to explore what the notion of "mobility" might mean when mediated through computing and communications technologies, and so far, the sociological treatment has been largely theoretical. This article seeks instead to explore how a number of dimensions of time and space are being newly reconstructed through the use of mobile communications technologies in everyday life. The article draws on long-term ethnographic research entitled "The Socio-Technical Shaping of Mobile Multimedia Personal Communications," conducted at the University of Surrey. This research has involved ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a variety of locales and with a number of groups. This research is used here as a resource to explore how mobile communications technologies mediate time in relation to mobile spaces. First the paper offers a review and critique of some of the major sociological approaches to understanding time and space. This review entails a discussion of how social practices and institutions are maintained and/or transformed via mobile technologies. Ethnographic data is used to explore emerging mobile temporalities. Three interconnected domains in mobile time are proposed: rhythms of mobile use, rhythms of mobile use in everyday life, and rhythms of mobility and institutional change. The article argues that while these mobile temporalities are emerging, and offer new ways of acting in and perceiving time and space, the practical construction of mobile time in everyday life remains firmly connected to well-established time-based social practices, whether these be institutional (such as clock time, "work time") or subjective (such as "family time").     

Networked Commerce: Public Policy Issues in a Deregulated Communication Environment

Electronic commerce will generate a number of new policy issues, few of which are presently being considered. Lawmakers and regulators have been so focused on establishing appropriate rules for vendors and service providers that they have failed to consider the larger consequences that the ensuing network architecture may have for the economy as a whole. Examining the forces driving electronic commerce and its likely impact on network deployment given recent telecom reform, this article argues that the government should reconsider common carriage as a means of assuring network access in the future.     

Regulatory Reform and the Promise of New Telecommunications Infrastructure in New Jersey

The information superhighway is depicted as important to maintaining national competitiveness in a global economy. The concept is particularly evident in the state of New Jersey and its legislatively supported plan, Opportunity New Jersey, to deploy advanced telecommunications technologies to all homes and businesses in just 20 yr. This case study of the decision-making process behind the passage of the New Jersey legislation illustrates how telecommunications companies have worked to couple their desire for less regulation with the desire of state officials for economic development, by promising to upgrade the infrastructure of the public network. With the upgrade promise comes a hoped-for economic development payoff in education, through distance learning, in health care, through telemedicine, and especially in new jobs, by attracting information-intensive businesses, like finance and insurance, to relocate in their service areas. The lack of clear connection between infrastructure investments and economic development means that the twenty-first century will come before strategies such as this are proven.     

Utopianism and National Competitiveness in Technology Rhetoric: The Case of Japan's Information Infrastructure

The ideologies of technological utopianism and national competitiveness are two common strands of twentieth century technology policy in developed nations. The former is the tendency to paint an unrealistic picture of schedule or benefits for a planned technological shift, while the latter is the use of a (real or imagined) advantage held by another nation as a justification for domestic policies. Both are techniques that can and have been used to sell technology policies to government, industry, and the public at large. This theoretical framework is used to analyze the emergence of the 'multimedia'/information infrastructure boomlet in Japan in the mid 1990s, and, in the context of the country's history and institutions, is used to explain the policy distortions that resulted.     

Social Equity and Prosperity: Thailand Information Technology Policy into the 21st Century

This forum presents Thailand's National Information Technology (IT) Plan and comments on the plan by three international experts: Seymour Goodman, Heinrich Reinermann, and G. Russell Pipe. The plan, which was prepared for Thailand's National IT Committee by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, is striking for its explicit consideration of social as well as economic goals in its specific objectives and implementation proposals. Agenda item 1 of the plan is to 'Invest in an Equitable Information Infrastructure: To Enhance Human Ability and Enhance Life Quality.' Implementation of the plan is proceeding well, although somewhat more slowly than anticipated, and support for the original goals and objectives remains strong.