Page 128 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

DBS and the Structure of US Policy Making 117

convened a significant shift in US policy had been initiated - away
from free flow and toward free trade. This change did not occur as a
result of US policy agents somehow putting their policy-house in
order. Instead, reforms emerged in an ad hoc manner in response to
the ascendancy of a trade-based conception of international commun-
ication issues by American private sector interests increasingly con-
cerned with future capacities to exploit their competitive strengths in a
range of information-based activities.

5.3 SHIFTING DEMANDS AND STRUCTURAL REFORMS

Although the need for a more coordinated communication policy was
first comprehensively addressed in the mid-1960s during the Rostow
Commission proceedings, after the OTP upheaval little incentive
existed among either elected or non-elected government officials to
reform the ways in which the United States made and implemented
foreign communication policy. By the early 1980s, however, the
importance of international telecommunications for a growing num-
ber of private sector interests, and the apparent intransigence of UN
agencies and the ITU, generated an organized push by some of
America's largest corporations to reform US foreign communication
policy agencies and their structural environment.
In the early 1970s, various state agencies struck committees and
commissioned studies with the participation of US-based corporations
to examine government policies in relation to the emerging American
service sector. In formulating the 1974 Trade Act, for example, private
sector input resulted in the recognition of service issues as trade issues.
Driving this forward - particularly in the minds of TNC executives -
was the development of communication capabilities involving the
convergence of computer and telecommunication technologies.
Through these advancements, the information and expertise held by
US-based businesses became increasingly sellable to spatially dislo-
cated markets. In the words of William Drake and Kalypso Nicolai-
dis, 'As transmission capacity increased and costs fell, buyers could in
principle purchase on-line services from abroad almost as easily as
from across the street. ' 34
In 1979, the combined market for computer and communications
hardware and services in the United States totalled approximately
$150 billion. By 1982, many analysts predicted that this market
would more than double within six years. US defense-based research