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CONCLUSION 173
the experiences of the South, we explored common features of the ways
in which postcolonial states negotiated the terms of telecommunications
policy. The cases of Brazil, China and India are of importance partially
because of their relative economic power as emerging economies and because
of the support and opposition by multiple publics about the cost of
rapid global integration. We saw that novel forms of policy intervention
and contestation are at play in both the area of access to telecommunications
infrastructure and in the related area of access to content. Public
discontent over corruption linked to the neoliberal development agenda
is apparent in demands for accountability from state bodies involved in
telecommunications reform as well as transnational and local capital. In
all three cases, the state continues to play a central role in mediating
redistributive concerns – at times articulated through a nationalist discourse
against the growing influence of multilateral institutions, dominant
Northern nation-states and TNCs. We have also seen new forms
of South–South alliance emerge both contesting the dominant rules of
trade in the WTO and establishing a development agenda within WIPO.
Similarly, we have seen the emergence of competing alliances and formations
such as the India–Brazil–South Africa (IBSA) trilateral initiative
and other efforts among Southern nations, in collaborating on a ‘social
agenda’ in trade and technology-related areas. These efforts should not
be seen as a panacea to the limits of the neoliberal regulatory regime,
but deserve greater research and inquiry. In this spirit, researchers and
activists have turned their attention to the Brazilian example in taking the
lead through its ‘digital inclusion’ policies with its state-sponsored initiatives
in using and promoting open-source software and how this model
may be replicated by states across the North–South divide (Gil 2005).
In the specific area of telecommunications reform, the gaps between the
information ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ were not expressed solely in terms
of class, but also through urban versus rural divides, gender disparities,
caste, race and regional distinctions. Consequently, demands for access
bring together ‘unpredictable’ combinations of social actors. It is in this
context, that greater attention must be paid to the institutional and cultural
logics of emerging information societies of the South. We feel that
there is a pressing need for transolocal and transnational comparative as
well as ethnographic research that connects the everyday experience of
citizens having access to and being excluded by (tele)communications and
ICT services, that can offer new insights into the role institutional actors
including state bureaucracies, private firms and civil society across the
world. Detailed, process-tracing research is needed to explore the commonality
of experience across geographies of exclusion within the privileged
‘North’ and between and across the North–South divide (Gil 2005).