Globalization and the Legitimacy of International Telecommunications Standard-Setting Organizations
Krishna Jayakar · Indiana Magazine of History (Indiana University) · 1998
In a 1991 article, Stanley Besen and Joseph Farrell, two well-known economists, put forward the opinion that the preeminence of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in international telecommunications standardization was soon coming to an end.1 Since its founding in 1865 in Paris as the International Telegraph Union, the ITU has been a major forum for international telecommunications standardization,2 along with other organizations like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The ITU/ISO-IEC system evolved into a comprehensive and elaborate process for standardization that worked effectively for more than a century. However, as the transition to a global information society accelerated in the 1980s, dissatisfaction with the time-consuming and contentious standard-setting process in the ITU began to rise. The creation of Regional Standards Organizations (RSOs) like the Standards Committee Tl of the United States, the Japanese Telecommunications Technology Committee (TTC), and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) was symptomatic of this dissatisfaction. Besen and Farrell argued that the rise of more efficient alternative organizational structures challenged the preeminence of the ITU as a standard-setter. The on-going contest between the ITU and RSOs is an interesting illustration of the challenges and conflicts inherent in globalization. As a body created by the cooperative efforts of states and dominated by national