Page 121 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

llO Communication, Commerce and Power

extent intra-agency) conflict has been commonplace due, to some
degree, to the often enormous economic stakes involved in most
communication policy decisions. Additional factors shaping policy-
10
making structures include the political nature of key civil service
executive branch appointments and related problems involving relat-
ively under-qualified appointees. All of these factors have contributed
to the ongoing predominance of influential lobbyists in the American
public sector- a phenomenon that itself was exacerbated by efforts of
the Reagan administration to 'deregulate' domestic and international
communications.
As for foreign policy specifically concerning telesatellites, it was
only in the early 1980s that the impact of the decade-old Open Skies
policy became widely felt. Also at this time, AT&T's domestic activ-
ities were radically re-regulated and, as a result, the focal point of US
relations with international institutions and foreign telecommunica-
tion entities was substantially decentralized out of the hands of Com-
sat and AT&T executives. In the early 1980s, for example, while the
Department of State was responsible for coordinating US private
sector applications to Intelsat in order to establish new international
telesatellite systems (the step that followed the approval of such
projects by the FCC), the often vigorous opposition mounted by
Comsat derailed most proposals. 11
A comparative review of the responsibilities of key US foreign
communication policy agencies provides a basic understanding of
why intra-state policy-making activities have been historically frag-
mented and, at times, conflictual.
The Communications Act of 1934 formally mandated the FCC to
regulate international communications involving traffic going into or
out of the United States through the Commission's approval of
required facilities, its allocation of frequencies, its licensing of specific
services, and its setting of domestic tariff and rate structures. The
FCC also was mandated to participate in US government negotiations
with foreign countries and organizations when these involved or
affected domestic services. 12
Domestic DBS systems, because of the continental scope of their
prospective transmissions, constitute virtually de facto transnational
systems. Indeed, US-based companies such as DirecTV consider
Canada to be a 'natural' extension of the American market. 13 Since
first formally addressing the DBS issue in the early 1980s, the FCC
has limited its oversight to four tasks: first, define, assign and enforce
appropriate frequency bands for domestic services; second, establish