Page 92 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Foreign Communication Policy and DBS: 1962-1984 81

'harmful interference,' for instance, was emphasized and the Brazil-
ians called for consultations between nation states to prevent the entry
of unwanted satellite signals. In 1963, an Extraordinary Adminis-
28
trative Radio Conference was convened by the ITU in response to the
formation of Comsat and the immediate need to allocate frequency
bands for space communications. With Soviet support, the US dele-
gation received frequency allocations from the ITU for the experi-
mental development of telesatellites. 29 Increasingly, however,
telesatellite issues were considered to be broadly 'political' rather
than narrowly 'technical.' For example, until the prospective feasibil-
ity of DBS technology was widely acknowledged, transnational satel-
lite communications had been coordinated by the ITU on a largely ad
hoc basis, and as such the introduction of new satellite services
through the administration of ITU engineers primarily involved the
protection of existing frequency assignments. With DBS, however,
both the political ramifications of the technology and its relatively
high research, development and implementation costs compelled ITU
officials to move toward a planned use of the radio-wave spectrum. 30
Instead of first-come-first-serve allocations, the prospect of DBS (and
the ITU's responsibility to promote universal telecommunication
developments, among other factors) led the Union to adopt a long-
term planning regime. This shift in approach involved far more poli-
tical intrigue than past decisions based largely on the short-term
calculations of engineers.
In 1964, following a report by the UN Scientific and Technical
Subcommittee of the Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Outer
Space (COPUOS), which concluded that DBS transmissions would
be technologically feasible within ten years, the UN Secretariat put
the COPUOS in charge of all prospective DBS issues. One year later,
the Brazilian delegate to an Outer Space Committee Working Group
to Organize a UN Conference on Outer Space recommended that 'the
question of the cultural and political impact of television programs
transmitted by artificial satellites' should be put on the conference
agenda. 31 By 1966, requests by the United Arab Republic (UAR),
Mexico and Chile resulted in the COPUOS commissioning a broad-
based study on the implications of space communications. An open
political conflict ensued, involving delegations from countries as
diverse as the Soviet Union, the UAR and France, all pushing for a
formal UN recognition that DBS activities require the accompanying
development of a regulatory regime reaching beyond the mostly tech-
nical boundaries of the ITU. The United States often stood alone in