Cover image for Meganet : how the global communications network will connect everyone on the earth
Title:
Meganet : how the global communications network will connect everyone on the earth
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Boulder, Colo : Westview Press , 1997
ISBN:
9780813330174

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30000005039700 HEY7631 D59 1997 Open Access Book Advance Management
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Summary

Summary

São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, has more mobile phones than does Paris. The largest phone system in Kampuchea is cellular. In the next twenty years, within one generation, everyone on earth will be able to place a phone call to anyone else anywhere. This Meganet is a patchwork of networks, big and small, local and global, primitive and high-tech, that fit together because they share compatible technologies.Most of Meganet is hidden in underground cables or in microwave circuits that move through the atmosphere with the speed of light. Meganet involves linemen stringing wire through South American jungles and Motorola executives investing $4 billion in Iridium stock to link millions of mobile phones.Why is Meganet emerging now? Two of our largest industries, electronics and communications, are changing quickly, often in an escalating tango of investment, technological breakthroughs, and distribution. The barriers to an advanced, digitized Meganet are economic and political. Over fifty governments are dismantling their communications monopolies by converting them wholly or partly into private enterprises. This new, competitive, and private-sector-oriented milieu has become the most important factor favoring the completion of the advanced, global Meganet early in the twenty-first century.Wilson Dizard's Meganet is a report on the progress and setbacks in expanding Meganet resources to everyone on earth. He examines not only the advantages, such as toll-free numbers and credit cards, but also such downsides as the potential invasions of privacy and the question of who will and who should control Meganet. Dizard describes the likely players: from the oil and utility companies who own desirable rights-of-way to Silicon Valley to emerging innovators in Chile and Germany.


Author Notes

Wilson Dizard Jr. is senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is a telecommunications authority with thirty years' experience in international and U.S. communications and is the author of The Coming Information Age, Third Edition and Old Media, New Media, Second Edition. His work has been translated into Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, Thai, and Korean.


Reviews 1

Choice Review

The title of this nontechnical book is, as Dizard (Center for Strategic and International Studies) claims, "a cliche, a convenient handle for tagging a set of ideas and events." The author's fundamental idea is that technological, economic, and political forces will converge to produce a multimedia-based electronic network that will link every inhabited place in the world. Drawing on a host of secondary sources such as the Financial Times of London, the Economist, Business Week, and the New York Times, Dizard has written a series of chapters that present a quasi-historical, zealous, and very entertaining look at the past, present, and future of "Meganet." The Internet will be subsumed as Meganet "will begin to reach its full potential as an information utility, serving the multiple needs of billions of users around the globe." The book is well written and informative. Even the appendix, "A Meganet Glossary," informs much more than the typical glossary. Recommended for undergraduate students, business professionals, and anyone else who has an interest in the future of telecommunications. E. J. Szewczak; Canisius College


Table of Contents

Prefacep. ix
1 Building the Global Information Highwayp. 1
2 The American Factorp. 17
3 The Master Builders: The Americansp. 37
4 The Master Builders: The International playersp. 66
5 Meganet Trade: The Hardware Buildersp. 87
6 Meganet Trade: The Software Buildersp. 102
7 The politics of Meganetp. 122
8 Internet: The Model for Meganet?p. 143
9 Tele Have-Nots: Meganet in the Developing Worldp. 166
10 The Open-Ended Futurep. 190
Appendix: A Meganet Glossaryp. 207
Notesp. 220
Select Bibliographyp. 244
About the Book And Authorp. 253
Indexp. 254