Page 70 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

58 Communication, Commerce and Power

In the general absence of a leading state agency possessing the clear
capacity to compel this policy shift, the task of locating its historic
development requires some analysis of more general contextual forces,
including technological change and the particular characteristics of
capitalist activities at the time. Beginning in the late 1960s, the expan-
sion of wide band transmission capacities made telesatellites attractive
vehicles through which state and corporate computer systems could be
interlinked over great distances. This general development of long-
distance capabilities using a technology whose costs were not distance-
sensitive, at transmission speeds far exceeding available terrestrial
capacities, and with the ability to serve almost any location on
earth, generated a growing private sector and military demand for
new telesatellite technologies. This rising demand compelled an
accompanying advancement in technologies specifically designed to
facilitate the interconnection of computers over such systems. Largely
because of the predominance of telephone traffic, the international
common carrier infrastructure was based on analogue transmission
technologies and related mechanical switching facilities. As such, the
new large-scale demand for vast and rapid computer data transmis-
sion capacities provided telesatellite proponents with an important
means of compelling the FCC to liberalize the field of telecommunica-
tions. Telecommunication technologies and policies emerged to
accommodate the capacities of emerging computer systems, and com-
puter technologies and policies emerged to accommodate the capaci-
ties of telecommunications. Most importantly, these developments
transcended traditional communication policy processes through the
unprecedented inclusion not only of computer companies but also of
large corporations interested in the capabilities and efficiencies that
the marriage of computers and telecommunications could provide. In
other words, FCC deliberations concerning telesatellites increasingly
involved far wider interests than those represented by officials at the
DoD, Comsat, AT&T, the NAB and the aerospace companies. 81
The Open Skies policy established in 1972 eventually involved
acceptance by the FCC of all qualified telesatellite applications,
based on technical feasibility and antitrust criteria alone. Additional
restrictions, however, were placed on proposals from both Comsat
and AT&T. The latter, for instance, was barred from participating in
new telesatellite developments for three years in order to provide
other companies with an opportunity to become established. 82 By
this time, AT&T executives recognized that their rarely discussed
but universally known quest to control a domestic telesatellite