Universal Access to Telecoms

It is hardly necessary to rehearse the extent of differential access to telecoms and the internet globally.  It has been well documented, and indeed there are indications it is growing: The ITU notes:  the “growth rate in the number of new telephone subscribers plunged in 2001.” (World Telecoms Development Report 2002; Reinventing Telecom Services) It seems likely that the lower-return rural lines are hit hardest.  How has this come about?  
Governance and the Network
In the past few decades, governance of telecommunications infrastructure has seen a revolution, from national to global levels. The ITU traditionally was the forum for telecommunication monopolies and governments to interact on matters of mutual interest: sharing tariffs between them from international traffic of a small range of telecommunication services (called the ‘accounting rate system’); allocating spectrum and satellite slots for their various uses and users; and agreeing standards for interconnection and compatibility.  
The rate and direction of network infrastructure growth and the tariff strategies pursued were determined partly by costs and partly by policy priorities. Richer countries had extensive universal service policies and mechanisms to ensure that rural subscribers were provided a service at affordable levels. For poorer countries, the situation was more uneven. Confronted with competing demands for essential services like water and electricity, telecommunication was often neglected and international tariffs used as a means to generate hard currency to support other activities. On the whole, national telecommunication systems existed largely in isolation from each other. This changed greatly from the mid-1980s onwards.
The USA, the UK and then the EU aggressively pursued a policy of liberalisation and privatisation. Bolstered by World Bank and IMF interventions, global strategies were hatched in such fora as the OECD and G7. Before long, a momentum developed towards a market-driven, commercially-oriented dynamic, which came to fruition in the WTO’s GATS agreement signed in 1997. This prompted a new regime in telecommunication in which national ownership, public or private, was to become a thing of the past replaced by a relatively small number of global telecoms and ICT corporations.  The old ITU accounting rate system was all but swept away through unilateral actions by the US, to be replaced by a market-based mechanism that favoured the wealthier countries overall.  The expansion of infrastructure and services beyond what was commercially attractive became the subject largely of universal service obligations administered (or not) by national regulators.
Pent-up demand and early profits
The early phase of privatisations and foreign investment in the 1990s saw quite rapid satisfaction of pent-up demand, built up over decades of under-investment due in part to the refusal of international banks and institutions to fund publicly owned networks. Hugely profitable markets in urban areas of the South were tapped and mobile phones, even beyond urban centres, became a quick and profitable means to supply the middle classes with a basic service. The accompanying move towards cost-based tariffs lowered the tariffs for international and long-distance calls but increased the tariffs for local calls and monthly line-rental charges.
Pent-up demand could offer national regulators or governments  an opportunity to impose universal service obligations as part of the license conditions on telecommunication operators.  Effective universal service and access policies would both extend the network and reduce tariffs for targeted users. Yet, it was difficult for developing countries to formulate, implement and enforce such policies, lacking specialist expertise and facing powerful corporations and pressures from their corporate homes. Furthermore in some poorer countries especially of Africa, demand even among businesses and middle classes was so low that national telecommunication operators were sold at knock-down prices with virtually no license obligations attached. At the height of the telecommunications boom of the 1990s, the focus of some investors was simply to secure territory and licences as the global telecommunication sector was carved up among a handful of corporations.
Overall, the success in implementing universal service strategies at national level has been limited.  Indeed, WTO rules which demand that these strategies be “not more burdensome than necessary” in terms of distorting market forces, have yet to be put to the test – if and when they are, the outcome may be a new set of hurdles to realising universal service.
Since the turn of the century, investment in telecommunication has slowed greatly, growth has stalled, and evidence suggests the market-driven approach has reached its limits. Having satisfied highly profitable pent-up demand, there is little appetite for investment to reach lower-return users, at national or international levels. With half the world’s telecom operators in private hands, the ITU notes that  “… most ‘easy’ privatisations have already been carried out .  Those that remain are, for the most part, beset with difficulties, for instance relating to an inflated workforce, indebtedness, political opposition or country risk. (…) [While] experience has shown that investing in an incumbent PTO [telecoms service provider] has generally provided a good return on investment, the timing is now no longer favourable… On top of this, the current stock market conditions are adverse.” (ibid)
Innovative technologies are still emerging, but for similar reasons, enthusiasm for experimenting and implementing them has waned.  A period of consolidation has set in, and those looking to the private sector, including the G8’s DotForce and WSIS, to bridge the ‘digital divide’ are to be disappointed. The market-driven logic of provision, lacking firm international and national political will to implement effective universal access policies, and traumatised from the spending spree and subsequent hang-over, has stalled where huge profits tail off, far short of reaching areas of most need. Donor-led and sometimes successful attempts to reach these users outside the market, promoting community access, low cost technology, etc., can do little to compensate for such systemic failure.  What is needed is a replacement of paradigm shift to one or more alternatives that do not put profit generation in the driving seat.  
Dilemma and Opportunities:
The problem is that no emerging paradigm absolutely clearly fits this bill.   And until one does, key government and international actors are unlikely to accept that an entirely new paradigm is needed, clinging to the hope that the corporate sector will rebound. This is the bind, and one where courageous governments, agencies and civil society can make a strong contribution. What is required now is a phase of vigorous experimentation and implementation of new ideas in technology, but also in how it is organised, regulated and funded. Opportunities abound.  
In technologies, the WiFi standard has seen independent community networks spring up in much of the wealthy world and even in the south – with virtually no external support.  Peer to peer technologies, the bane of copyright holders, are growing in strength and capabilities.  Open source and free software have the potential to significantly reduce costs, yet still encounter concerted corporate resistance reflected in such arenas as the WSIS. ‘Spread spectrum’ technologies may render redundant the idea of spectrum scarcity; and bearing in mind that spectrum is a public good, calls from various respected Commissions and bodies for a tax on commercial spectrum-use, to be channelled to development needs, warrant revisiting.  
For that matter the pariah status of public investment in monopoly network provision is largely undeserved, and was the driving force of early telecoms development everywhere. Community construction and ownership of networks has been shown to be successful but has never, for obvious reasons, had major political or corporate backing.  Finally, there is still scope for robust universal service policy, that can retain for network development some more of the profits currently being extracted by foreign corporations. Indeed, one might conceive of a global universal service policy where a small fraction of international telecom revenues are directed towards network development in the south, built into a revised tariff-sharing system.   
The issue at this point is not lack of ideas and possibilities.  It is a lack of political will and fear of incurring displeasure among the champions of liberalisation.  Such fears can be overcome through developing in practice realistic alternatives that all can benefit from, and implementing a paradigm that puts people and development before markets and profits.  

Additional Resources: Global Media Governance a Beginners Guide, 2002,  Seán Ó Siochrú  and Bruce Girard with Amy Mahan, 2002.
(http://www.comunica.org/gmg ); Les Echecs d’une Revolution: Dan Schiller, Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2003