[WSIS CS-Plenary] The Economist on the 'realdigitaldivide'

[Carlos Afonso]

Milton is as usual presenting relevant arguments, but I dare to disagree 
a bit with him. Nothing in social and economic relations is for eternity 
(Fukuyama tried to convince us of the contrary...), and, more important, 
never the once-and-for-all solution.

I agree the socialist experiences humanity saw in the 20th century had 
unsurmountable problems (mostly caused by the faults of its realization, 
not its concepts and ethics), together with several achievements which 
reflected into the very way capitalism evolved (bringing into it, or 
better, forcing into it concepts completely alien to its logic, like 
social responsibility  and so on). Actually the European social 
democracies derived a lot of their core concepts from socialism and 
embedded these into their market economies.

So, I agree with Milton that *in the particular case of 
telecommunications* in most countries, state monopolies reached a 
dead-end at a specific historical juncture in which the solution was to 
seek forms of bringing private capital investments into it. The success 
of this privatization varies - in some countries it was just an outright 
replacement of a state monopoly with a private one. In others, like 
Brazil, seemingly clever arrangements were made by which no monopoly 
would run any service in any region -- it did not work, for the simple 
reason most capital brought into the scene came from abroad and the 
corresponding owners are merging, thus making fun of the national laws 
regarding competition in the telecomm business here.

Today fixed telephony is run by only one incumbent in each region, and 
only with new technologies can other players challenge this. Not even 
unbundling of the fixed phone system was achieved-- meaning that only 
one provider (the same who owns the telco infrastructure) in each region 
provides broadband services via phone lines.

As to the goals of universal access and digital inclusion, the only 
achievement has been the dissemination of cell phones -- and there is no 
evidence that a state monopoly would today run it differently from a 
cartel of three companies like we have here. Simply the technology 
worldwide grew so fast and the gadgets went so cheap that the companies 
producing them literally invaded all countries with those little, cheap 
wireless hear-and-talk boxes.

The rest? Broadband only where there is a market for it (at expensive 
monthly costs, about four times more than in France, for example, 
considering monthly price per Mb/s). The two main cities, Rio and São 
Paulo, have plenty of "black holes" where the monopoly telco (Telefónica 
de España) does not think it is lucrative to offer broadband -- digital 
inclusion projects have to rely on satellite connections within São 
Paulo in many neighborhoods, in one of the richest cities in the 
Southern hemisphere!

As to using dial up access, it is one of the most expensive in our 
region -- pulses charged at hefty prices mean the phone bill runs 10 
times higher than what an ISP charges for monthly access, and most 
families cannot afford to pay these two bills, even many of the ones who 
afforded to buy a computer...

So much for the market... Let us never think that leaving solutions to 
the will of the market will solve problems, because "the market" as 
envisioned by many as the salvation simple does not exist -- it is just 
power broking among huge cartels devising ways to skip or circumvent 
regulations when there is any...

On the optimistic side, I think The Economists' blahblahblah reproduced 
ad nauseam by the mainstream media (themeselves companies who are part 
of capitalist cartels, so they really do not believe what they are 
telling us) has been more and more falling into ridicule due to abundant 
evidence which most people feel on their hearts and minds every day to 
the contrary.

Another world is still possible! :)

--c.a.

Milton Mueller wrote:

>>>>Sasha Costanza-Chock <schock at riseup.net> 3/14/2005 7:07:42 AM >>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>I apologize for bringing this back on-list, 
>>    
>>
>
>Why? It would be nice to have a substantive discussion of actual
>communication policy issues on this list for a change.
>
>  
>
>>[The] cock-sure 'answer' proposed by the Economist: (surprise
>>    
>>
>surprise) 
>  
>
>>liberalize and privatize and the market will take care of everyone.
>>    
>>
>
>Well, it's just the flip side to those who persistently claim that "the
>market" is responsible for every problem and that state intervention in
>"the market" can cure every evil. It's the debate of the 1980s, and it's
>time to move beyond it. 
>
>For those of us with a longer historical perspective on
>telecommunications development, it is impossible to ignore the fact that
>most of the world spent about 75-100 years with national telephone
>monopolies ostensibly devoted to "public service" and "universal access"
>and managed to produce rates of telephone penetration that were
>shockingly low. Waiting lists of 5-10 years, indifferent extensions of
>service, pricing as a luxury, cross-subsidies to politically favored
>interests, stunted development - the story was all too familiar,
>repeated in country after country. The introduction of competition in
>the last decade or two and the development of new regulatory models
>designed to facilitate a competitive system broke the world out of that
>cul de sac and it's really hard to find cases where it didn't improve
>things relative to the past. 
>
>Now we know, of course, that market liberalization of the sector can't
>cure every social problem but we ought to have learned something about
>the dangers of overregulation and over-politicization of the sector,
>too. So lets move forward, and not reproduce old ideological debates
>between "communism" and "capitalism" when it's clear that economies
>without markets collapse into inefficiency and stagnation, and markets
>without institutions fostering equal rights and distributional equity
>create their own set of social problems.
>
>  
>
>>Of course, they frame it as 'market failures' rather than as 
>>inherent to markets
>>    
>>
>
>Is your point that markets are inherently evil and we should abolish
>them altogether? Hmm, didn't someone try that before? 
>
>Look, I respect people with a more leftist orientation and am perfectly
>willing to work with people whose ideology differs from mine when
>possible and appropriate. I will firmly resist, however, interventions
>based on the assumption that we are all ideologically homogeneous, or
>the idea that one can establish one particular ideology or viewpoint as
>the dominant one simply by repetition. 
>
>--MM
>
>_______________________________________________
>Plenary mailing list
>Plenary at wsis-cs.org
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>
>
>  
>

-- 
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Carlos Afonso
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tel +55-21-2527-5494        fax +55-21-2527-5460
ca at rits.org.br            http://www.rits.org.br
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