Satellite communications: Technology for privatizing the globe

Reviewed by

Lee Artz

Purdue University Calumet

 Communication satellites: Global change agents. Eds. Joseph N. Pelton, Robert J. Oslund, and Peter Marshall. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum: 2004. 387 pp. $39.95 paper. (ISBN 0-8058-4962-9).

            For those concerned with the future of global communication, understanding the function and potential of satellite communication is a must. Communication Satellites, a collection of essays (written primarily by scholars, researchers, and directors of commercial satellite systems) provides an excellent, perhaps unsurpassed, entry to learning about the contribution of this communication technology to international communication. Exceedingly thorough in its historical and technological overview, this text is a valuable compilation of how satellite communication has evolved into a commercial enterprise for advancing privatization and Western values--although that conclusion is not necessarily shared by the editors who are more sanguine about commercialization of information.

            In five topical sections (Technology; History and Politics; Business, Media, and Economics; Impact of Society; and Future Trends), most contributors suggest that "communication satellites have redefined our world" (p. 4). In the words of lead editor John Pelton, satellite systems such as Intelsat, Panasat, SES Astra, Eutelsat, Asiasat, and some 100 other space networks "will soon start to fashion what might be called a `Worldwide Mind'" (p. 10). Intel has developed a 10GHz microchip that will "process the human equivalent of a lifetime of reading and speaking in a single second" and thus within a decade satellite links could be operating at the equivalent of moving several Libraries of Congress per minute (p. 13). Given their centrality to the distribution of information content speed and quantity, satellites may indeed represent a key means to globalization, the primary technological change agents, bringing the potential for worldwide education and healthcare, as well as electronic diplomacy and economic trade: "The implications reverberate everywhere--to business, education, health care, entertainment, public safety, even armed conflict" (p. 21).

            The massive electronic footprint that satellites make on global communication has been sudden, but almost unnoticed by a Western public now accustomed to cellular phones, Wireless Internet service, and 24/7 on demand satellite-distributed news, entertainment, and personal communication. In one of the most informative chapters, one of two on geo-politics by John Oslund, how we arrived at global satellite communications is explained in an organized and well-documented, chronological narrative. Oslund recounts the "cycles of technological innovation" in their geo-political context, indicating some of the important interactions between industry and government, including: 1) the laying of submarine telegraph cable between the Civil War and WWI, primarily by UK and other colonial powers seeking expansion and consolidation of their empires; 2) the government orchestrated introduction (and battle between UK and US) of high-frequency radio technology between the world wars; 3) commercial submarine telephone cable by multinationals such as AT&T during the cold war; 4) US government-driven acceleration of the commercial deployment of satellite technology (including Congress creating a private communications satellite corporation--Comsat) following the 1957 launching of the Soviet's "Sputnik," and the establishment of an international satellite organization Intelsat, with US commercial carriers such as AT& T, RCA, and ITT sharing space with primarily European PTT's--public satellite agencies; 5) the second decade of satellite technology, establishing an International Maritime Satellite Organization (Inmarsat) to utilize a new frequency (L band),  allow multiple global satellite systems beyond Intelsat, and the free market "competitive procurement" of satellites, which emphasized the US commitment to private ownership of space--Nixon's so-called "open skies policy;" 6) the introduction of digital fiber optic submarine cable in the late 1980s, which dramatically increased the capacities for digital transmission of satellite communications, accompanied by a US mandated "separate systems policy" for privately-owned US satellite systems; 7) the debut, or return, of the low and medium altitude satellites in the 1990s which accompanied the US-led global sprint to communications deregulation and privatization, followed by the "reform" of the International Telecommunications Union to include private companies as members with participation rights equal to nation-states. No one can fully understand the dominance of multinational telecommunications corporations in international communication without knowing this 150-year process of privatization, primarily championed by consecutive US administrations (Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter, Reagan … ) and Congressional committees. Although Oslund writes without critical reflection or comment on domestic and international US government intervention on behalf of private corporations, political economists should be struck by the obviousness of the intentional institutional and ideological trajectory of the globalization of privatization and commercialization.

            Oslund's chapters, as well as those by Lerner, Marshall, and Wold, and the six authored or co-authored essays by co-editor Pelton, share this non-reflective appraisal. Perhaps due to their extensive and long-lived affiliation with satellite technology and the satellite industry, they exhibit a reluctant but nonetheless palpable conclusion about the "many ways that satellites will define our future" (p. 6). Focus on technological innovations, administrative problems, and the concerns of the "communications satellite and power delivery satellite communities" (p. 331), as well as recurrent references to the predictions of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller further indicate the text's guarded propensity to privilege technology as the primary influence on global change--without sufficient historical and political contextualization. In "The World of Satellite TV: News, the Olympics, and Global Entertainment," Marshall and Wold concentrate on how satellites have improved broadcasting, broadband, and other market growth for telecommunications and entertainment industries. Their ultimate illustration of the value of satellite broadcast is the BBC/PBS "Millenium 2000" broadcast which reached more than 1 billion people. This event and others related in the chapter are indeed stunning, indicating beyond dispute the reach of satellite communications. The content or social value of the information goes unmentioned, as what seems to matter is the size of the audience and distribution of programming. At this point in the text, a discerning or more skeptical reader may be needing a small dose of Herb Schiller, Vincent Mosco, Dayan Thussu,--or even some cogent remarks from a historian such as Eric Hobsbawm (2004), who observes that innovations "do not make themselves" (p.11).

            Communication and its technologies have always developed as a social product--the dialectic, material result of extended human interaction. In their application, communication technologies have been used as political and cultural tools by competing social groups, and then evolved as part of the social process of use, change, contestation, and group interest. Satellites may be globally influential, even revolutionary (albeit not in the way that literacy changed cognition and tradition); still, satellite communication, like all communication, depends on who controls, who employs, who has access, and how it is used. No technology, by itself, can act on a social order without human agents. The issue then is: "who decides?"

            One contributor, Hamid Mowlana, seems to resist the celebratory thrust of the book, asking for a more sober appreciation of technology currently controlled by private industry and governments intent on deregulation, privatization, and commercialization. In outlining the disparate visions of Western capitalism and the Islamic notion of "ummah," or community," Mowlana questions: "Does the global information community now emerging facilitate or impede the social use of information and help to meet the genuine social aims and needs of non-Western society? (p. 306)--a less guarded geography would include the social aims and democratic interests of citizens of the Western world as well. In other words, Mowlana recognizes that satellite communications is not a self-acting entity--the development and deployment of satellites has primarily served the political and economic interests of leading telecommunications corporations and other Western corporations that employ the technology for profit. Mowlana states it simply, "communications media did not create the international system, but instead the technological framework and political-economic interests of the international system created the image we have of communications. This image, for the most part, has been developed by the self-serving interests of the information elite" (p. 311). Pelton and the other editors should be applauded for including such a critique. Readers are advised to begin with Mowlana's chapter as a lens to understand and better appreciate the observations of the other more rosy offerings less concerned with citizen participation and non-consumerist communication.

            Pelton, for one, does recognize that satellite use and impact is not predetermined, but his description of "telepower" (the benefits of satellite communication) and "teleshock" (the potential downside use of satellites) is decidedly politically narrow in the liberal pluralist tradition (pp. 352-355). The threat of "linguistic colonialism" is noted in passing, without elaboration, while freedom and democracy are inveighed only in reference to terrorism, crime, and pornography--without discussion or even mention of the obstacles to free speech and democratic dialogue that institutionally exist because of private control of technology. Pelton's concern with information overload echoes Lazarsfeld and Merton's "administrative research" emphasis on mental dysfunction, not with any concern about the monopoly of information by seven global companies and the accompanying loss of information production and distribution by billions. Throughout the text, access to production--a key function of any communication system--is treated lightly. Still, the wealth of information about how the satellite and telecom industries intend to use their technologies for fun and profit that is included in this text makes it a valuable, almost necessary, resource for industry and telecommunication scholars.

            For citizens and critical international researchers, this compilation describes the real and potential power of satellite communications, a clear global signal for why communications technology urgently needs regulation for democratic participation and use.

References

Hobsbawm, E. (2004). History and the new age of reason. Le Monde Diplomatique: pp. 1, 11.

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