Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

62 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION
the sector. This was especially the case for nations where other more
vital areas such as energy and water as well as health and education
were more pressing priorities for governments with limited resources.
By the late-1970s, the logic and scope of the national monopoly model of
telecommunications began to be seriously challenged by the post-Fordist
regulatory shift. Technological advances stemming from research in the
defence-related electronics sector introduced new satellite, cellular radio,
fibre-optic and digital exchange technology, which became increasingly
vital components of all sectors of economic activity. This was true not
just in the First World where most transnational firms were based but
also in Asian and Latin American economies where firms began to relocate
production. These new technologies led to the potential for the
provision of segmented and differentiated services, thereby undermining
the assumptions about the need for a ‘natural’ monopoly in the sector.
For most Western nations, these technological changes coincided with
the fiscal crises of the 1970s, creating a crisis of legitimacy for the welfare
state. The failures of the postcolonial state to deliver equitable modern
telecommunications infrastructure became acute, compounded by the
debt crisis of the 1980s and new pressures for privatization of national
monopolies. The eventual collapse of Eastern European communism
further reinforced the need for reformulating the state’s role in regulating
industry, especially infrastructure areas like telecommunications that
were by the 1980s recognized by powerful governments in the West as
well as multilateral organizations as crucial to new developmental imperatives.
Leading the charge for reform in deregulating and ultimately liberalizing
telecommunications policy were politically powerful states led by new
conservative political forces, embodied in the Reagan and Thatcher period.
Despite the successful expansion of telecommunications services in
the US and the UK, influential policy experts gained authority to espouse
‘the moral superiority of individual choice compared to the “tyranny” of
collective decision-making’(Graham and Marvin 2001: 91). For the organization
and supply of telecommunications services, reformers from the
US, the UK and in the World Bank and ITU argued that cost-based tariffs
should replace the regulatory logic of cross-subsidy; in other words, business
and other larger users of services should not have to subsidize smaller,
less remunerative users or ‘customers’. In this same period, transnational
telecommunications firms found a receptive climate for their demands to
enter ‘untapped’ national markets and for advanced networks that were
seamless in order to facilitate coordination of production as well as transactions
across national borders. The dominant global policy consensus
posited that state regulation and ownership stunted innovation and led to