4. Creating a global communication infrastructure

This week’s chapter is called “creating a global communication infrastructure”. Since the beginning of the chapter, two terms are highly important in order to understand the material: liberalization and privatization of the international communication.

First, let’s start with the “privatization of the international communication sector” (Thussu 67) . In the chapter, Thussu defines it as a “telecommunication company that goes from public to private”. It’s not the government who controls its communication or economic movements anymore, it’s a particular person or a group of people who own it and manages its activities.

Indeed, this action of privatization is made in order to achieve specific goals vis-à-vis the societies and the particular all over the world.

Amongst these goals, we can cite: “enforcing the international trade agreements, remove hindrances hence increase income and growth” (Thussu 68). The agreements were set in order to regularize the trade across the borders because it became on a bigger scale and the rules were changing since the communicators were from numerous backgrounds and countries.

Later in the chapter, the writer presents the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements that have been made in order to have a better performance/result of the privatization of the public telecommunication sector. It was a kind of a revolution in the world of telecommunications in the sense that even the name of the service was replaced from “transborder data flow” to “information trade” and everyone started using internet and mobile phones to be a part of the “new world”.  

Adding to that, the relationship between computer industries and telecommunication became more untied with the new agreements of WTO. Each domain was becoming more independent and needed to be considered more carefully and professionally.

Moreover, the chapter tackles the relationship between the two cold wars and the satellite industry.

As we all might know, TV is hugely important nowadays and the majority in homes, cafés … use satellites in order to have access to international TV channels all over the world. The writer evokes different case studies that show how important was the transition and the evolution of the usage of the satellites among the international telecommunications field. Indeed, it explains the historical facts that made many countries have some communication issues because of this industry and how problems got fixed with time.

Moreover, it is also discussed in the chapter different types of global communications systems such as “Hughes Network” and the “Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications”. It presents their strategies in order to make the communications across the borders easier and to show how it has evolved as the time goes. At the end of the chapter, the writer lists the ones who benefits from the defined concepts at the beginning of the chapter which are “liberalization and privatization”.

After this quick summary of the chapter “creating a global communication infrastructure”, I would like to react on the privatization part. I totally agree with this strategy because it can have many benefiters as the writers mentions and the company becomes more manageable and the access to the information becomes more controlled. Even though we’re talking about a huge amount of information travelling across the different networks but, the most important is that it’s private.