Creating a Global Communication Satellite System: Local Versus Global Tensions

The subject of this presentation is the establishment, during the 1960s, of the first global satellite communication system, Intelsat (the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization). Policy entrepreneurs in the United States decided to establish a satellite communication system open to all countries in the world. Partly as a response to cold war competition with the Soviet Union, the Kennedy administration overturned the previous administration's policy of treating satellite communications as simply an extension of traditionally regulated telecommunications. Instead of allowing private communication companies, most notably the dominant communications carrier, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), to set up separate systems that would likely primarily serve profitable communication routes to Europe or other major developed regions, the US government decided to take the lead in establishing a single world system. Interconnected organizational and technical innovations reflected a new view of international communications. The old large-scale system was based on the commercial dominance of AT&T, with the support of government regulators; the new system reflected a different understanding of commercial technology serving the public good, one in which global needs ranked with domestic economic and political considerations. The individuals involved in the creation of a global system recognized that they could not compartmentalize such subjects as international treaties covering frequency allocation, the development of system standards, foreign aid to developing countries, domestic economic policy, and military planning. To gain a deeper understanding of the particular form of globalization connected with the introduction of this new communication technology during the cold war, it is important to analyze the different response of other countries to US efforts to convince them to join the Intelsat system (both western and non-western countries).