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TIPI International White Paper
Emerging Issues in the International Telecommunications and Information Environment: Research Topics
Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute University of Texas, Austin TX 78712, USA +1-(512) 471-5826
Nobuya Inagaki (inagaki@mail.utexas.edu) Romi Mahajan (romimahajan@mail.utexas.edu) INTRODUCTION * 1. TELECOMMUNICATIONS * A. Policy Aspects * World Trade Organization * International Telecommunication Union * Federal Communications Commission * Special focus: Harmonization * B. Access and Equity * Universal Access * Digital Divide * C. Subsidies * D. Regulatory Frameworks * E. General Political Milieu * F. The role of the state/government * G. Structure * H. Rates * I. Procurement * J. Technologies * Convergence * Innovation * K. Services *
2. INNOVATION CLUSTERS/TECHNOPOLES * A. Space and Place * B. Agglomeration * Institutional Frameworks * Other importance factors include: * Cultural Conditions * Demand * "Environmental" Conditions * Labor * C. Agglomeration is not a sufficient condition * D. Software Development *
3. ELECTRONIC COMMERCE * A. Space/Place * B. Taxation * C. Supply chain/ Industrial structure * D. Technological Bases * Transaction Security * Privacy * E. Intellectual Property *
REFERENCES *
Emerging Issues in the International Telecommunications and Information Environment—Research Topics
In much of the discourse over the last few years, the following series of conjectures and statements have been given the status of "truths" by commentators who seek to examine and describe the wholesale changes brought about in the global socioeconomic system as a result of the advent of the information society:
Still, despite the prevalent discourse, there are critical views of each of these notions. Scholars and critics who seek to unpack the dense rhetoric of "globalization" point towards increasing disparities in power between countries, in wealth within and among countries, and, further, they adduce evidence to suggest that while capital flows freely in the increasingly globalized world, people do not--thereby creating conditions whereby certain countries and certain "global cities" continue to accrue economic benefit, often at the distress of "disconnected" countries and hinterland areas within both developed and developing countries. Moreover, critics point out that globalization need not necessarily imply privatization of once public resources, although the nation-state, once considered the integral unit of analysis in political economy, no longer reigns sovereign. Trade agreements and supranational organizations like the World Trade Organization have increased importance and often supersede individual states’ policy making bodies. Trade blocks and regional cooperation agreements (i.e. NAFTA, Mercosur) have also been ceded power by nation-states. Critical to the ability of capital and information to flow, often without regard to physical or national boundaries, is the existence of high-speed telecommunications linkages connected to a variety of types of hardware, which constitute the digital infrastructure. This infrastructure along with customized software enables the almost instantaneous transfer of money and information--the very process of transfer and transmission constitutes an inordinately large percentage of the "economy." At TIPI International, our goal is to understand the ways in which telecommunications and information intersect processes that are governing economic and social systems in the world. What types of policy frameworks would allow for continued economic expansion while ensuring equity and access? How should institutions be configured and how should they interact to ensure constant innovation, but without concomitant social ills being created? Should all countries be subject to the oft-prescribed remedies of privatization and competition or should the importance of local factors supersede the "needs" of global capital? How can companies, governments, and communities close the digital divide? Is technological harmonization sufficient, or need policy harmonization as well? The questions asked above are simply points of departure. What theories are implied in these questions? What is the evidence to support views from different sides? TIPI International’s project is to gather the crucial sets of evidence in order to begin answering such questions and to create analytical frameworks that would help companies, governments, and communities in their ability to understand the implications of the telecommunications, information, and Internet "revolution." We have identified the following areas that will form the core of our analytic efforts:
We recognize that these three areas are not distinct or mutually exclusive. We plan to use this first White Paper to establish the scope of a broad research agenda in these areas. A series of workshops, conferences, and presentations on areas covered in this white paper will be convened over the coming years. We also are ready to undertake research projects on issues connected to telecommunications, information, and innovation policy; with our web of professors, student associates, and outside contacts, we plan to create balanced, well-researched, and informative reports for scholars, businesses, and policymakers. The following is a set of research questions that the work behind this White Paper suggests. They identify some of the most significant problems researchers should tackle in the near term.
1. TELECOMMUNICATIONS As countries throughout the world attempt to become economically competitive, they are increasingly emphasizing the role of telecommunications facilities and networks in enhancing economic growth. The correlation between advanced telecommunications facilities and economic growth has become a truism. A number of studies have demonstrated the positive relationship between telecommunications development and economic growth. (for a detailed research overview in this area, see Saunders et al., 1994). Even though many scholars are careful to avoid claiming causality, the abundant evidence on the association between telecommunications and economic performance gives enough justifications for policy makers to prioritize telecommunications development over other social and economic needs. As evidence mounts that the state-owned telecommunications behemoths are inefficient and technologically obsolete, countries are being prodded to liberalize and/or privatize their telecommunications networks. Given the enormous size of the telecommunications industry, these events are of extremely important proportions in any study of the global economy. The mix of liberalization/privatization and the international flow of capital has transformed the scenario in the telecommunication sector, whereby this sector, once considered a utility only, has now been cast as a major profit center. Samarajiva and Goddard comment that "what were once plain old voice networks are now seen as the central conduits of the information society, analogous to the canals and railways of the industrial society" (1990, p. 227). Thus, we recognize the duality of telecommunications:
Within the orbit of telecommunications are several parameters, each of which can be treated as an area of inquiry and research. The following is a roadmap of this section: Parts A, B, C, and D deal with broad policy aspects of international telecommunications. Parts E and F deal with political parameters that affect the international political economy of telecommunications. Part G, H, I, J, and K deal with specific aspects of the quickly changing international telecommunications milieu.
As supra-national organizations increasingly determine national economic and social outcomes, any understanding of the global telecommunications and information environment must take into account the ways in which various organizations, both supra-national and national, interplay with each other in shaping the global policy environment. Chief among these organizations are the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the European Union (EU). Though the WTO is not focused on telecommunications issues only, the trade regime promulgated by the WTO necessarily includes large, important industries like telecommunications.
Trade in telecommunications services had been almost nonexistent until quite recently because telecommunications carriers in most countries were domestically owned, often by the national governments themselves. Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, countries gradually started to incorporate telecommunications services into international trade regimes, under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and, later, the World Trade Organization (WTO). Today the WTO has become the primary policy body for the economic, and often political, aspects of international telecommunications. The WTO is important for the following reasons:
Particularly important in the WTO's recent activities is the agreement reached by 69 member nations in 1997 on the liberalization of basic telecommunications services. The direct precedent to the 1997 agreement was the Telecommunications Annex created during the GATT's Uruguay Round negotiations (1986-1994). Although the Telecommunications Annex lacked the clarity that would help to enforce rules, it was a crucial first step toward creating the globalized telecommunications carriers and services with which we are so familiar today. The 1997 pact essentially removed foreign investment barriers to signatories' domestic telecommunications markets (accountable for more than 90 percent of the world's telecommunications revenues). Just like other trade-related rules and agreements in the WTO, the pact on basic telecommunications services would significantly affect national sovereignty because it requires signatories to amend their respective domestic laws and rules in accordance with WTO rules. Areas of inquiry:
International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union, one of the oldest international organizations, plays a fundamental role in global and national telecommunications policy. The Union was founded in 1865 when nations realized the need for international coordination of radio telegraphy in order to avoid frequency interference. In the next century and half, the Union has been the primary international arena where nations and telecommunications carriers convened and coordinated for the smooth international operation of telephone, radio, and satellite communications. Members of the ITU include corporations and governments. The respective goals of these actors are often different. The ITU performs three main functions (which correspond to the sectional divisions of the ITU),
(Frieden, 1996, p. 65) The ITU's member nations have historically maintained cooperative attitudes in order to maximize the benefits of interference-free radio operations. At times, however, the ITU has come under various pressures as more diverse interests began to emerge and compete for worldly communications resources. The sheer increase in the number of the Union members (188 governmental members and 600 non-governmental members including private companies as of 1999) poses a challenge to establishing multilateral, world-wide based agreements and coordination. More importantly, however, the Union, which traditionally had been a technical and administrative organization, increasingly has become a political arena in which national, private, and public interests directly confront each other. For example, starting in the 1970s orbital slot allocation has become an area in which the incumbent users (i.e., developed nations) have been challenged by developing countries that demanded a fair share of the finite space resource (orbital slots). Related to this are the problems of non-coordinated satellite launching (e.g., China's unilateral launching of a satellite in 1994 into a slot where potential frequency interference with adjacent satellites is very strong) and the "paper system" (e.g., the Kingdom of Tonga's registration for an orbital slot with the sole purpose of leasing the slot to other countries/carriers for profit) (Kennedy and Pastor, 1996, p. 57). In addition, the Union has come under the pressure of liberalization and privatization movements across the world and must adjust its regulatory activities to the deregulated telecommunications environment. The ITU has recently launched a reform effort in order to adjust the Union to the changing contours of international telecommunications (The Plenipotentiary Conference, Minneapolis, 1998). Although the specific changes have not been finalized, the nature and the direction of the ITU reform were clearly indicated in recommendations from the ITU Reform Advisory Panel (ITU, 2000). Some notable recommendations include:
Areas of inquiry:
Federal Communications Commission The FCC is the United States' national regulatory body. It plays an important role in U.S. telecommunications and information policy and, as such, it plays an incredibly important role in determining the policies that other countries adopt as well. In recent years, the FCC has been actively harmonizing its international policy with that of the World Trade Organization, especially with the WTO's historic agreement on the liberalization of basic telecommunications (1997). On the other hand, however, the FCC has acted unilaterally on certain policy areas before gaining international consensus. A case in point is the FCC's effort to establish fixed international accounting rates for international calls involving U.S. carriers (Kennedy and Pastor, 1996, pp. 123-130). Such a practice would affect not only the rate structure for U.S. international carriers but also foreign carriers' revenue streams--often built upon profitable international toll revenues--to furnish universal service or other social obligations. Beyond its role as a U.S. negotiator at international bodies such as the ITU, the FCC also performs various functions which have international repercussions. As recently as 1999, the FCC initiated an assistance program--Connecting the Globe--aimed at a few key developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America/Caribbean, and central Europe (Federal Communications Commissions, 1999). Under this program, the FCC provides regulatory and policy assistance to developing countries to enhance a transition to pro-competitive telecommunications markets. Areas of inquiry:
As policy organizations and trade agreements increasingly emphasize the need for open door policies for capital and investment, the issue of standards or "harmonization" has come to the fore. This connotes both technological standardization and policy harmonization that allows for seamless national policies on telecommunications, information, and e-commerce. As in the case with regional bodies such as the European Union, harmonization is key if economic unity is to be sought after. Harmonization has become the watchword in an increasingly integrated global telecommunications and economic environment, especially with regard to EU directives in this area. Harmonization refers essentially to the need for standards in the following areas.
Uneven telecommunications developments among different countries have been a persistent feature of the global telecommunications map, but such a recognition has been heightened since the mid-1980s when the Maitland Commission reported striking statistics, including a telling story that there were more telephones in Tokyo than in the entire continent of Africa (ITU [Maitland Commission], 1984). The problem was revisited more recently when the Administrative Committee on Coordination of the United Nations issued "The Statement on Universal Access to Basic Communication and Information Services: "We are profoundly concerned at the deepening maldistribution of access, resources, and opportunities in the information and communications field." (United Nations, 1997, paragraph 5) As countries throughout the world are reconfiguring their telecommunications industries, the issue of Universal Service/Access is itself being reconfigured and recast; still, it is uniformly on the agendas of all telecommunications policy bodies. There has been considerable debate about the general definitions of key terms in the areas of access and equity. The most important subject of inquiry here is Universal Service. The definition of this term as propounded by the WTO is rather vague and allows great latitude country to country (though many countries have on their own defined the term in more precise, exacting ways). Universal Service: Any Member has the right to define the kind of universal service obligation it wishes to maintain. Such obligations will not be regarded as anti-competitive per se, provided they are administered in a transparent non-discriminatory and competitively neutral manner and are not more burdensome than necessary for the kind of universal service defined by the Member. (Inter-American Telecommunications Commission, 2000, p.11) Shorn of political motivation, this term can be reduced to one sentence--referring, simply, to the obligation to provide telecommunications service to all residents of a country irrespective of their demographic or geographical location. As telecommunications access disparities between developed and developing countries and within countries as well are being exacerbated, this issue is a fundamental social aspect of any understanding of the global telecommunications environment. From a sociological perspective, Gillespie and Robins (1989) argue that the geographical inequalities in telecommunications development (i.e., developed vs. developing countries, and rural vs. urban areas) would lead to a spatial hierarchy with strong centralizing and monopolizing tendencies by the technologically advantaged regions. Not only with regard to social obligations, universal service also presents long-term business opportunities to companies that would win markets heretofore untapped. Since competition for these areas is by definition low, a niche player could come in and stand to make substantial profit. This is true given the fact that even in the most developed countries, there is not universal access/service. Table 1. Teledensity in selected countries
Note: Teledensity measures the number of main telephone lines per 100 inhabitants. Source: International Telecommunication Union, 1999.
We recognize the following five elements as essential for achieving universal access/service: 1.Affordability: Affordability of services to everyone within national, regional, and local contexts. 2. Availability: Physical availability of necessary infrastructure, network components, and supporting mechanisms. 3. Accessibility: Uniform and undifferentiated quality and quantity of services across geographies (i.e., urban and rural) and user segments (i.e., business and residential). 4. Applicability: The existence of different communities with different histories and wholly different economic and cultural frameworks necessarily endangers differential ability to master the "cultural" components of telecom technologies. 5. Desirability: New research indicates that not all communities observe any benefit as a result of being wired; in short, having telecommunications access does not particulary ameliorate their general economic or social conditions. These elements of universal access should be discussed separately for domestic and international contexts--though universal service funds have historically been derived from revenues from international phone traffic (for some countries) and from business-service subsidy (in the case of the United States). Although it is important to make policy and regulatory efforts to level the uneven telecommunications access across nations, we should be aware that the presence of severe inequalities within individual nations significantly reduces the effectiveness of such efforts. For example, Thailand's urban areas enjoy a moderate teledensity of 27.3 percent, while the teledensity for the country's rural areas, which account for 81 percent of the population, is a meager 2.6 percent (ITU, 1998). Areas of inquiry:
If the lack of universal service is a policy problem, the digital divide is a social problem that emerges from the intersection between social systems and communication technologies. The digital divide is increasingly being addressed by scholars and policy makers who have seen that, with regard to the diffusion of technology, a rising tide does not lift all boats. This phrase refers to the international and intranational disparities not only in access to hardware and software but also in the cultural and educational prerequisites for using technologies like telephones, computers, and the Internet. Increasingly, companies and governments are looking at ways of making hardware available to impoverished sections of society but are finding that mere access is not a sufficient condition for the proper diffusion of technology-utilization. There is a huge imbalance between penetration in advanced and developing countries(see ITU, 1998). In addition, there are huge rural-urban, gender, class, educational and cultural divisions. The digital divide issue is not reducible to the lack of universal service. The idea of universal service refers to the access to physical infrastructures such as telephones and computers. In contrast, the concept of digital divide addresses underlying socio-economic inequalities that are manifested in information gaps. Digital divide is nothing new in the context of international relations. The New World Information and Communication Order propounded (NWICO) by non-Western countries in the 1960s and 1970s precisely captured the notion that information inequality is a flip side of political-economic inequalities among countries. During this international debate, the question of "representation" emerged as the key issue. Whose interests are represented in the international flow of communication? Who is allowed to participate in decision-making processes over the terms and conditions of the international economy? The NWICO movement lost much of its momentum in the 1980s as more countries chose to adopt a free-market model for both general economic governance and telecommunications policy. Yet, the fundamental problem of information gaps persists today. Areas of inquiry:
The linchpin of universal service in many countries has traditionally been the subsidy. There are two major forms of subsidies in the telecommunications business. First, subsidies (both direct and indirect) are funds that telecommunications users or carriers receive from other carriers or the government. The sources for the funds vary among countries. In the United States, for example, the "Lifeline "is a program, funded by telephone companies, that subsidizes part of the telephone bill for low-income residents. By contrast, in South Korea, the government took a strong initiative and passed various laws in the 1980s in order to raise universal service funds from government bonds and other public sources. Second, subsidies occur internally within a telecommunications carrier. This form of subsidy--internal cross-subsidization-- takes place between the revenues from difference lines of businesses (e.g., local service, long-distance service, enhanced services, etc.). However, two competing dimensions are observable in internal cross-subsidization. On the one hand, internal cross-subsidization has been a normal practice in many countries as a means to provide universal service. The government or the regulated private monopoly sets artificially high rates for some services (notably long-distance for businesses or international services) above actual cost in order to use the revenues from these services to set local service rates below cost. Thus, this type of internal subsidization reflects a public policy concern. The second type of internal cross-subsidization has a private character reflecting the profit motives of private carriers. Telecommunications carriers often engage in both competitive and less competitive services. Provisioning less competitive services may promise guaranteed sources of revenues for carriers, while competitive services are, by nature, less reliable sources of revenue and profit. In order to increase the market shares in competitive services, carriers are interested in reducing the price in competitive services by using the revenue subsidizing from less competitive services. It is regulators' job to restrict this type of internal cross-subsidization in order to ensure a reasonable and well functioning competitive market place. Areas of inquiry:
It is a truism that the booming telecommunications sector throughout the world is fueled by technological advancement. However, we must be reminded that the changing regulatory practices provide both the impetus and the method for much of the telecom restructuring in the past few decades. (For a brief overview of the importance of regulation, see Sinha, 1995.) Just like the technological convergence toward digital technologies, we are observing a regulatory convergence toward telecommunications deregulation throughout the world. Some of the specific components of deregulatory policies are the corporatization, privatization, and liberalization. It is imperative to understand the contending interests played out in deregulatory phases, as well as the sequencing of different deregulatory phases and their effect on the post-deregulation environment. There are two general frameworks:
Areas of inquiry:
According to Cowhey (1990), a given telecommunications regime (e.g., PTT system, regulated competition, open marketplace, etc.) cannot be explained just by technological characteristics but also by the ways in which various political variables are consciously calibrated. The wholesale changes in the global economic environment necessarily beg the question of national politics and the ability of national governments to implement policy directives that come from supra-national organizations. Different social and economic groups view the changes in the global polity in different ways and this causes ruptures and tensions in the socio-economic system and different countries have different internal issues to contend with. For example, in India large businesses were clamoring for rate reform and the entrance of competition in the Indian telecommunications market, but public sector employees and large tracts of the bureaucracy were totally against the entrance of competition. Extremely important is the degree to which government decision making/policymaking and regulation are insulated from "lobbies" and "special interests." William Melody defines regulatory independence as the "independence to implement policy without undue interference from politicians or industry lobbyists"(1997, p.197). Authoritarian governments give the "okay" to privatization proposals more easily than do democratic polities (Mody and Tzui, 1995; Petrazzini, 1995), but issues of justice and social equity shift the terrain of analysis to understanding how decisions regarding telecommunications carriers can be made to both ensure social equity and create efficiency and innovation. The existence and strength of trade/labor unions is an extremely important factor that impinges on any analysis of the relationship between political factors and telecommunications economics. In several cases of privatization and liberalization (for example, New Zealand, India) trade unions played an extremely important role in the configuration of political and economic institutions directly involved in the privatization/liberalization process and, certainly affected the final outcomes. Labor has been identified by scholars like Petrazzini (1995) as one of the most important of the "special interests" from which the policymaking apparatus must be insulated. Areas of inquiry:
F. The role of the state/government As organizations like the WTO and the IMF force national governments to reduce spending in certain areas of the economy and encourage governments to privatize resources, the question of the role of national governments immediately emerges. The degree to which national governments have control over their own policies seems to be eroding as foreign capital comes with strict contingencies and/or prerequisites. Still, we are reminded by Evans et al. (1985) that it is important to "bring the state back into" the analysis. An axiomatic principle in much of the discourse on globalization is that the state should retreat from the economy, in favor of the private sector. Still, the state is called upon,
Abundant evidence suggests that state involvement in creating technological innovation is a necessary, though certainly not sufficient, condition. For example, the notion of "Created Competitive Advantage" whereby competitive advantage can be created through "conscious state policies," is still widely accepted. The examples of Japan and South Korea can easily be adduced here. (For the importance of the state in information economy, see Michael Porter’s (1990) argument in The Competitive Advantage of Nations; Manuel Castells (1996) argues that the state is playing an increasing role in national economic and technological competitiveness, despite privatization and digital networks that allow for the free-flow of capital.)
Areas of inquiry:
The structure of telecommunications companies is largely determined by the requirements of an increasingly competitive global economy, the configuration of which is determined increasingly by supra-national free-trade organizations. Most countries in the West and many countries in other parts of the world have privatized their PTTs and have introduced competition in basic, long distance, and value-added telecommunications services. Most of these telecommunications giants raise capital from global markets and list shares on global stock exchanges, thereby making them subject not only to internal regulation, but market regulation as well. Structure, therefore, cannot be seen as an independent factor but, rather, as reflective of the general economic matrix. One of the most vital issues is the creation of distinct roles for policymaking, regulation, and management of telecom providers; whereas in earlier eras, these functions were bundled, the rigors of the global market have forced a decoupling of these responsibilities, though in reality these three functions formally or informally been ceded to consortia of large telecommunications providers. The regulatory changes at an international level have fundamentally influenced the on-going industrial restructuring in the telecommunications sector. In the markets where the PTT model was replaced by a free-market model, we are observing, quite ironically, an enormous amount of corporate consolidations among telecommunications companies. In addition, a number of global telecommunications companies are vigorously purchasing foreign telecommunications assets and interests through foreign direct investments and joint ventures. Areas of inquiry:
Telecommunications rates or "tariffs" as they are called in many countries have become an increasingly important issue in developing countries since the volume of business transacted over the telecommunications network is exploding. The transition from PTT to private networks generally brings rates down, especially for international calls. Businesses in developing countries continuously lobby their governments to discontinue prices fixed at high rates so that rate harmonization makes their businesses more competitive. However, the reduced international accounting rates threaten the existing cost-allocation schemes among telecommunications providers, who have historically used the lucrative international and domestic long-distance revenues to subsidize local services. As noted earlier, these often entail universal service obligation s on the parts of the providers. In addition, most developing countries see high accounting rates as a means to transfer wealth from the developed to the developing worlds. International calls flow unevenly between developing countries and developed countries; developing countries receive more international calls than they initiate. Given the international settlement practice--the settlement fee is paid to the carrier which terminates a call by the carrier which originates a call--developing countries can take advantage of this uneven flow of calls and earn extra cash by setting accounting rates high. Nevertheless, the majority of nations recognize the economic benefit of reducing international accounting rates along with interconnection charges among carriers. The question is, then, how can we derive the optimal rates for cross-border communications? Accounting rates have historically been determined by a series of bilateral agreements between state-owned monopolies responsible for originating and terminating international telephone calls. The process was rather simple because in many countries there was only one international carrier. However, as privatization and liberalization of the telecommunications sector multiplied the number of international carriers in many countries, the old and new players became much more eager to provide competitive international rates, thus upsetting the heretofore relatively simple process of setting accounting rates. Equity constitutes another issue regarding telecommunication. There is the perennial demand from business that rates continuously drop as innovation introduces lower cost bases. Yet, as rates decrease, the benefits are experienced differently between different types of services and different subscriber categories. For example, the rate of inter LATA U.S. toll-service has decreased since the mid-1980s while the rates for local switched service has, in fact, increased. Areas of inquiry:
The size and importance of the telecommunications industry makes the procurement of telecommunications equipment a serious issue in the international economy. As in many industries, a few large players dominate the market in switches, networks, cables, and other equipment. Developing countries that do not have national champions to provide such equipment and, thus, have to depend on foreign vendors to create their telecommunications networks, incur certain disadvantages. The key issue is that few companies globally can provide telecom equipment on a large scale; therefore, national champions of developed countries often become global providers.
Table 2. World's leading telecommunications equipment suppliers
Source: Dow Jones Interactive. [Online]. Available: http://nrstg2p.djnr.com/
Developing countries and their telecommunications service providers often have to face oligopolistic structures, dominated by foreign firms, when buying basic infrastructural equipment, thereby hampering any chance they might have of creating an independent development model for their telecommunications environment.
Areas of Inquiry:
Melody identified new technologies as a "fundamental underlying factor…essential to efficient telecommunication development" (1995, p. 250) and convergence and innovation are key features of telecommunications development.
Technological convergence has presented itself as the common goal threading through much of the current technological innovation in the telecommunications and IT sectors. At the same time, technological convergence is closely intertwined with other forms of convergence, namely, regulatory convergence and industrial convergence. From a regulatory perspective, technological convergence makes some of the traditional ways to classify different telecommunications services obsolete. This creates enormous policy and regulatory difficulties. How do regulators handle "international calls" when such calls are transmitted through Internet Protocol networks, in which users mostly bypass the traditional telephone networks? From an industrial perspective, technological convergence has provided an opportunity for corporate consolidations through which separate companies with different technological and service backgrounds join hands.
The international telecommunications environment is moving "Beyond POTS (Plain-Old Telephone Services)". Technological developments provide part of the solution to existing problems, such as bandwidth shortage and high costs. But, as consumers worldwide have more advanced needs for telecommunications, plain old telephones services no longer suffice. In this regard, wireless options (such as wireless local loop) are especially promising. For example,
Technological promises do not automatically translate into actual deployment. Non-incumbent, competitive players develop many new telecommunications technologies. Incumbent carriers (which are government administrations in many countries) may find new technologies a threat to their existing operating environment. Global liberalization of telecommunications services forces incumbent carriers to face the challenges from competitive foreign players. Technological benefits and social benefits o or losses should be balanced through effective industrial policy. Areas of inquiry:
There are numerous ways to describe different types of telecommunications services, but confusions sometimes occur as a result of the lack of systematic categories. For example, Frieden (1995) notes the increasing murkiness of the concept of common carrier as a result of telecommunications companies' attempt to parcel out new classes of services and technologies from regulatory obligations accompanying common carriage. Though classificatory schemes are necessary in any analysis of telecommunications and telecommunications services, technological convergence is fast blurring the distinctions that are highlighted in such schemes. The obeisance to hidebound schemata is currently causing great distress in the bodies that develop U.S. telecommunications policy. As such, it is of methodological interest for TIPI International to identify different classificatory schemes and the relevance of each. Some of the possible schemes are: By classes of services:
By different user segments:
By network types:
By transmission types:
By regulatory obligations:
2. INNOVATION CLUSTERS/TECHNOPOLES
In this section, the terms "innovation cluster," "milieus of innovation, " and "technopole" are used to refer to any concentration of technology bodies and companies in any geographic location. They are not wholly interchangeable, but for purposes of scanning, they can be read as being largely interchangeable. Technopoles may not always end up being "milieus of innovation," since a mere clustering of technology companies and skilled personnel does not necessarily result in innovative products and processes. Still, since we are presenting a complicated version of technopoles/milieus of innovation here, the logical differences among these concepts are implied in the text. The following is a roadmap of this section: Part A addresses the fundamental question of space and place--does place still matter in an economy characterized by almost instantaneous flows of capital and data? Part B discusses the process of agglomeration that leads to regions becoming hubs for innovation. Part C warns that agglomeration itself is not a sufficient condition for innovation; there are many other aspects that are of equal importance in creating milieus of innovation. Finally, Part D outlines some of the major issues in one of the most exciting areas of innovation, namely, software development.
Despite the familiar cant that place has become irrelevant in the information society, evidence from most quarters suggests that in fact physical location, or place, is of extreme importance in determining economic and social outcomes. This is true within countries as well as internationally. The theoretical framework of "central place theory" (Christaller, 1933/1966) underscores the hierarchical aspects of place. Saskia Sassen’s (1991) work on "global cities" and AnnaLee Saxenian’s (1990; 1994) work on networks and innovation suggest that, in fact, in an increasingly globalized economy connected by digital networks that allow for instantaneous transmission of capital and information, there is a tendency towards concentration—in particular locations such as New York, London, Tokyo. These global command and control centers act as "headquarters" of the global economy. This entire section on innovation is premised on the importance of place in international innovation, whether because of the role of the state in that region, the amount of capital available there, the number of producer services companies, the availability of a large labor pool, good educational institutions, or simply because of the importance of informal networks that are place-specific.
Areas of inquiry:
…technological innovation is not an isolated instance. It reflects a given state of knowledge, a particular institutional and industrial environment, a certain availability of skills… and a network of producers and users who can communicate their experiences cumulatively. Manuel Castells (1996, p. 37)
Countries throughout the world have realized the importance of technological innovation to economic growth. Many have allocated considerable percentages of their available resources to the creation of a sound technological edifice--given the paucity of financial, technical, and human resources in most of these countries, many have decided to pool available talent in specific geographical locations so as to create a synergistic multiplier effect. The mantra to create new Silicon Valleys is oft repeated in the policy-making halls and chambers of commerce of both developed and developing countries. There are several key factors in understanding economies of agglomeration: institutional frameworks, government policies, provision of infrastructure, cultural conditions, the existence of social/informal networks, the availability of subcontractors, the buoyancy of local demand, broad "environmental" conditions, and the constitution of labor.
Institutional frameworks and configurations have been recognized as an important parameter governing to a nation's ability to innovate, to adapt innovative technologies into useful products, and diffuse innovations. Scholars of innovation like Abdus Salam (1991), Manuel Castells (1989; 1996), AnnaLee Saxenian (1994), Christopher Freeman (1995), and Peter Hall and Paschal Preston (1988) have concurred on the need for dynamic institutions to be linked organically with each other and for technopoles or economies of agglomeration to become more than simple linear additions of resources. The term "institutions" here can be taken in the broadest sense and would include educational, cultural, legal, research and development, chambers of commerce, and citizen panels. Each makes an important contribution to innovation processes. The ideal model for institutional configuration is also the apotheosis of technopoles: Silicon Valley. There, educational institutions, governments, corporations, chambers of commerce, and legal practitioners work in close collaboration to create an "ambience" for technology. For a synergistic institutional milieu to take root, linkages between different elements are essential. The following issues are important when analyzing institutional milieu:
Government Policies Relevant Parameters:
The following are some policy tools employed by governments to spur innovation:
Infrastructure Provision:
-Access Fees-Availability of broadband access -Number of Internet host computers
Other importance factors include: The existence of social/informal networks: Castells and Hall’s work on "Technopoles of the World" (1994) indicates clearly that without networks and linkages, the simple addition of all the "physical" elements is by no means sufficient to create an innovation cluster. In "Regional Advantage," Saxenian (1994) argues that informal networks are the key to the sustenance of innovation clusters. The availability of subcontracting: Lessons from Silicon Valley indicate the importance of technology and personnel transfer form large companies to small and medium sized "subcontractors" which then become poles of innovation.
Cultural conditions play a huge role in the creation and sustenance of technopoles. This is true from many angles:
-non-hierarchical -interactive -supportive of a relaxed atmosphere
-Feudal structures rarely result in technological innovation. Generally speaking, there is a dialectical relationship between general cultural conditions and technological strides. Castells puts it very well: "… in general terms, the closer the relationship between the sites of innovation, production, and use of new technologies, the faster the transformation of societies, and the greater the positive feedback from social conditions on the general conditions for further innovation." (1996, p 37)
Increasingly, developing countries are adopting export orientations and paying scant heed to the fact that many developed countries created buoyant domestic markets to support investment, R&D, and innovation. Having given up import-substitution industrialization as their model, these countries are paying less attention to the inner urges of their economies and more attention to the needs of developed countries. The work of Christopher Freeman (1995) on "National Systems of Innovation" highlights the importance of buoyant domestic demand. Fagerberg (1992) reaffirms the importance of the "home market hypothesis," in which a correlation is found between a large home market and innovation potential. Important considerations here include:
The conditions of life offered to high-skill intensity personnel is a determining factor in their desire to migrate to a technopole. There is a need for the existence of a congenial atmosphere to attract best talent. Important factors include:
Still, there are tremendous drawbacks to the technopole model, including:
-Prices all but the elite out of living in the technopole
The issue of labor is fundamental to understanding milieus of innovation. First and foremost, unlike in an industrial economy, the main asset of technology companies is human resources. Therefore, it is of fundamental importance for a milieu of innovation to be based in an area in which there is an abundant supply of highly skilled labor. Second, it has been established (see the work of Sassen, 1991; 1996; 1998, and Castells 1996) that milieus of innovation/technopoles/"global cities" arise as such only if there is an abundance of producer services in the vicinity; therefore, milieus of innovation have non-technical labor requirements as well: legal, financial, advertising, media, transportation, travel services, and, of course, blue-collar labor. Third, since technopoles tend to be concentrations of capital as well as concentrations of upwardly mobile industries, a large sector of technopole labor sees its average wage increase phenomenally. Still, equally large and often larger sections of the populace who are not employed in the managerial and high-skill sectors of the technopole economy see their average wage stagnate or even in cases decline. This process leads to fairly predictable social tensions that government and civic authorities must solve creatively. Fourth, from an international perspective, the lack of high-skill intensity personnel and sophisticated producer services impinges on the ability of developing countries to create milieus of innovation. Information technologies were created for countries in which high employment prevails; in many developing countries, unemployment and underemployment is endemic and pervasive, thereby calling into question policies that replace labor with technologies. Key issues here include:
-Technopoles reproduce class society. -Semi-skilled workers see their real wages stagnate or decline. -Level of deskilling that creates a permanent reserve pool of labor.
C. Agglomeration is not a sufficient condition In their frenzied rush to recreate Silicon Valleys in their nations, governments from around the world have created conscious policies to create economies of agglomeration. Numerous countries and regions have created thousands of "incubators" to spawn innovative enterprises. Still, many times their policies have not borne fruit. The main issue is that the simple linear addition of resources is not sufficient, because:
-Example: Decline of Route 128 (Boston) Several examples of technopoles that were "artificially" constructed being failures has completely changed the previous notion that putting resources and institutions in physical proximity and throwing money at them will necessarily result in innovation. (See Castells and Hall, 1994, for examples of such abortive efforts.) Areas of inquiry:
D. Software Development Software development is a key area of innovation that runs into the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. While the United States is not only far and away the biggest producer and consumer of software, this is one area in which developing countries can stake a claim. Among developing countries, Ireland and India shine brightly as examples of the ability countries lacking in capital have to create and sell software services and to a lesser degree, products. There are certain requisite elements that go into the creation of software products and services. When the requisite elements are in place, a software technopole is created. The legendary Silicon Valley is the apotheosis of the technopole. Silicon Valley is the prime technopole because of the following non-exhaustive list of factors:
Focus on Developing Countries: For TIPI International, a focus on developing countries is in order. While most software produced in and exported from developing countries is done so to service the advanced "triad" economies of the US, the EU, and Japan, many developing countries are also making attempts to bolster their relatively flat domestic markets. Still, the tension between the service and products quantum exists, most developing countries being structurally unable to break into the "traded," "packaged," or "product" software arena. Thus countries like India, with over $5 billion in software exports, rely largely on services to grow their software businesses.
Services vs. Products
-Product Cycle Theory-At the innovative stage of the product cycle, high -skill personnel are required in abundance. -Offshore work/Value-Chain--Since the work that large corporations in the advanced countries outsource to offshore companies is well-define d and low-end, developing countries often stay at the low end of the value-chain, whereas product development is a the high end of the value chain. -Lack of Domestic Demand--The lack of domestic demand means that software companies in developing countries need to win business from foreign corporations on whom they thus become dependent. Since the work they win is usually low-end and won on the basis of low-cost and not high-skill, these companies remain near the bottom of the value chain. Related factors include: the lack of institutional capacity for innovation and low disposable income so that there is little consumer demand. Low-End vs. High End services-- most work that is offshored is low-end work that creates technological stagnation. . There are profound institutional inadequacies in developing countries that militate against the possibilities of creating innovative software products. Since software development is not an isolated instance, but emanates from a whole set of requisite factors, developing countries, lacking many necessary elements, cannot compete on equal parley with the advanced economies. Fundamentally, there is a lack of milieus of innovation; this includes,
-The circulation of personnel is shown by Saxenian to be of vital importance in maintaining continual innovation. Possible Remedies:
Developing countries that are exporting over $5 billion/annum
(Nature of the software work is an important factor here--is it high-end or low-end? Note: Software Creation is not an indivisible black box; there are high-end and low-end functions. Information intensity is NOT synonymous with capital intensity.) Areas of inquiry:
It is forecast that electronic commerce will grow to $4 trillion by 2003. The sheer increase, actual and estimated, in the volume of e-commerce is impressive. Much more intriguing, however, is the dialectic that is being formed between e-commerce and the social, economic, and policy milieux. How will e-commerce influence fundamental conceptions such as "place"? Are existing regulatory frameworks equipped with the capacity to face the digital economy? How will the industrial and market structure change? Where will consumers fit in the picture, and how? These are some of the questions we are facing today, and the following discussion constitutes a launching pad for our inquiry.
A familiar notion in the information age is that e-commerce obliterates the importance of place. The idea is that the web is fundamentally distributed and virtual, so that physical location is not a huge consideration. Thus, the rhetoric goes, the Internet levels the playing field and affords business opportunities to anyone anywhere. Some small and historically less powerful countries are increasingly counting on this promise when they formulate industrial policies. These countries attempt to tap into the global economy through a technological channel, that is, through e-commerce. Vogel and Gricar (1998a) call them "small countries with big footprints." For example, based on sophisticated telecommunications and digital infrastructure, Singapore became an "intelligent island" and established itself as the financial and communication hub in the South East Asia (Tan, 1999). In the Balkans, Slovenia has emerged as one of the world's most rapidly advancing technological centers by consciously making industrial policies around technologies in general and e-commerce in particular (Vogel & Gricar, 1998b). In some ways, such developments challenge the traditional notions of space and place. However, evidence suggests that the cant of place-independence is suspect and that, in fact, successful e-commerce companies require a host of other services and technological support; therefore, being in a "technopole" is important. Consider the following:
Areas of inquiry:
Many governments view rapidly growing commerce on the Internet as a potential new source of tax income. At a minimum, they do not want to lose existing tax revenues to the new medium. However, e-commerce challenges the existing tax systems because it is precisely the effect of the Internet to entangle the definition of tax boundaries upon which all tax codes in national and local levels in all countries are built. As Whinston et al. succinctly put it, the central taxation question e-commerce poses is to determine "what is being taxed, who should be taxed, and who can impose taxes" (1997, p. 489). Even within a single country, it is difficult to reach a consensus regarding this question. For example, when the U.S. Congress passed the Internet Tax Freedom Act in 1998, which would essentially minimize e-commerce taxation, the legislation failed to gain support from state and local governments, who saw the law as detrimental to their tax collecting ability. In the international context, e-commerce taxation is a point of dispute among different countries and organizations. While the United States and the WTO endorse the idea that customs duties should not be imposed on e-commerce, the EU only partially agrees with this notion and proposes to impose the Value Added Tax (VAT) on e-commerce that takes place within the EU member countries. Harmonization in e-commerce taxation has not yet materialized. Two organizing schemes have been identified by tax scholars and government authorities in envisioning future tax codes for e-commerce.
The basic question revolves around the question of "neutrality": The concept of "neutrality" deals with the following fundamental question: Should the same tax codes be applied in any situation? With regard to e-commerce, neutrality implies that the existing tax frameworks, which were developed for non-electronic commerce, are sufficient to handle e-commerce taxation. Governments and tax authorities must formulate the best recipe by considering all variables. The ultimate goal for the national governments in most countries is to institute an optimal tax framework that clears the way for the development of e-commerce while maintaining an adequate level of tax collection. As we will discuss in the next section, e-commerce potentially further empowers existing large corporations without granting the same level of benefit to small and new players. Less stringent tax codes for e-commerce advocated by many countries and institutions may exacerbate such a tendency, thus prolonging the history of limited forms of competition or oligopoly in many industrial sectors. Areas of inquiry:
C. Supply chain/ Industrial structure Because of the high level of fluidity in all aspects of digital transactions, e-commerce potentially alters the old industrial structure based on the separation between the producer, distributor, retailer, and consumer. Particularly interesting is a popular view that the greater access to information enabled by the Internet would wipe away intermediaries (e.g., wholesalers, distributors, etc.) from the supply chain. However, as Jin and Robey (1999) point out, the Internet economy still provides opportunities for intermediaries between sellers and buyers. In fact, we are observing the emergence of "cybermediaries," of many different varieties. There are auction companies that constitute an intermediate step between buyers and sellers, B-to-B sites, commerce sites that act as cyber-middlemen, and web-enabled finance/trading companies that are go-betweens between buyers and sellers. One of the fundamental requirements of a competitive marketplace is the free flow of information. Buyers and sellers use market information to make sound economic decisions. E-commerce, and its underlying technologies and infrastructure, promises such a resource on an unprecedented level. However, modern industrial histories in most countries are characterized by a tenacious effort by corporations to control and restrict the flow of information in order to maintain a hierarchical relationship between sellers (corporations) and consumers. On the one hand, e-commerce challenges such a hierarchy by making marketplace information accessible by consumers. On the other hand, corporations are rapidly acquiring sophisticated technological means to control the flow of information, and the ability of consumers cannot match the enormity of corporate capital and resources. (For an analysis of these two prospects, see Grover & Segors, 1999.) Thus, although many envision that competition will bring e-commerce to a higher stage, we must critically analyze the contending tendencies of the new digital economy. (For a critical view of this digital economy, see Schiller, 1999) E-commerce potentially influences industrial structure also in terms of the relationship between large and small corporations. Industrial dominance by a few giant suppliers has been a persistent feature in many industrial sectors throughout the world. Again, e-commerce potentially alters the relationship between companies of different sizes. Whinston et al. (1997) discuss several ways in which the commerce of the Internet affects the competitive gap between large and small players. On the one hand, the virtuality of the Internet closes such a gap by making the differences in corporate sizes less visible. On the Internet, small companies can present themselves as well as larger, incumbent companies. On the other hand, however, large companies can maintain their market dominance through a variety of means--such as by transferring their "off-line" reputations online, and by exploiting economies of scale based on their product diversity and corporate size. Areas of inquiry:
One does not have to be a technological determinist to realize the critical roles played by technologies in e-commerce. Beyond obviously technological aspects such as the necessity of electronic networks and the requirement for interoperability among the machines involved in electronic communications, technological components fundamentally affect the core values and hence the likelihood of a successful development, of e-commerce. The two outstanding technological issues that reflect core values are transaction security and privacy.
The core of any commercial activity is the transaction between sellers and buyers, and intermediaries when applicable. In conventional face-to-face transactions, the sellers and buyers have fairly accurate knowledge in terms of when, how, and whether at all each specific phase of transaction (i.e., ordering, negotiation over terms and conditions of sales, fulfillment, and payment) takes place. As more transactional phases migrate to the electronic domain, however, the accuracy of such knowledge (or the means to check the accuracy of such knowledge) deteriorates. For example, when a buyer places an order over the telephone, he or she may actually be calling somebody who is disguising as a seller. Digital transactions over the Internet introduce myriad uncertainties at every step of commercial transactions. In addition to accurately carrying out transactions, e-commerce also must exclude uninvited third parties from transactions. Electronic transactions, especially the ones over the Internet, are comparatively insecure against eavesdropping and tampering by outsiders. This situation is largely the result of the historical origin of the Internet. The Internet was first developed as a tool for academic research, which by its nature is (and should be) more open and public. It was not designed for commercial applications, and the underlying technologies do not have security as the first priority (for an overview of the security problems of the Internet architecture, see Bellovin, 1989). While e-commerce policies and regulations certainly fashion the environment in which e-commerce evolves, e-commerce must be equipped with necessary technological capabilities that guarantee secure transactions in order to develop as a viable addition and, more importantly, alternative to conventional commerce. The following are some of the technologies that attempt to achieve this purpose:
On this matter and particularly germane to the work of TIPI International is the set of restrictions imposed by governments on the export of cryptography software and technologies. The issue of national defense is invoked to restrict trade in such technologies. Again, in order for a lubricated trade environment in global e-commerce, there will have to be harmonization of rules regarding cryptography technologies.
Privacy in electronic transactions is paramount in e-commerce. E-commerce by definition involves the communication of valuable personal and transactional information (name, address, credit card number, etc.) over the telecommunications networks. Consumers may be wary of sending information given the perceived dangers of eavesdropping, password sniffing, data modification, and other types of online misconduct (Bhimani, 1998). Transaction security and privacy considerations share many technological bases. Aside from the technological issues, privacy considerations are important because the development of e-commerce largely depends on the trust consumers put in this new commercial system. Privacy is an issue of such immense proportions that disagreements over privacy policies (such as that which occurred between the U.S. and the EU) can have huge ripple effects in the entire global e-commerce milieu. Again, harmonization is the order of the day. Issues:
-U.S. government is reluctant to create pointed legislation--instead, they leave it up to companies on their own recognizance to employ "good faith." - The U.S. government is reluctant to set technological standards for consumer protection. Again, it is left up to the companies to do this.
-Some sites know what search term is used to find them, thereby disclosing important information. -"Cookies" are employed such that historical sessions, along with a great deal of sensitive data, are recorded Areas of inquiry:
As in much of the discourse in other areas of inquiry, intellectual property considerations loom large in the analysis of e-commerce. Though there is the standard gamut of intellectual property considerations with regard to the technology platforms used by e-vendors, the more weighty issue revolves around the use of the data acquired from customers. Even the slightest intimation that the intellectual property belonging to one company is subject to being misused by another casts a gloomy pall over all e-commerce transactions. With international, national, and even local regimes for the treatment of IP issues being implemented, the e-commerce world is increasingly subject to regulatory scrutiny, though in many cases, the sovereignty of the end-user-and not the e-vendor, is being reduced. From another point of view, an immense row over intellectual property has been created by e-vendors who sell third party content to customers. For example, the various on-line music download companies like MP3 and Napster are being scrutinized as are online purveyors of book content. There are several cases in docket now and likely by the end of the year 2000, a more concrete set of legal protocols will emerge. Areas of inquiry:
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