Richard Martin Blog: The Rise of Telecom Nationalism

Is the world at the start of a new era of Telecom Nationalism?

In recent weeks nations have enacted laws and regulations in near rapid succession to control the spread of, and in some cases ban outright, mobile communications technology. Though the threat of an immediate cutoff of BlackBerry service in India has been pushed back, for now, Research in Motion remains locked in a battle with India’s Dept. of Telecommunications over gaining government access to encrypted corporate e-mails transmitted over the BlackBerry system. India is only the latest of several countries, mainly in the Middle East and South Asia, to threaten to block BlackBerry service; RIM earlier this month reached an agreement with the Saudi Arabian government to avert a shutdown in that country. The company has offered to allow full monitoring of instant messages and text messages transmitted over its system, but India has rejected that offer.

Increasingly, new communications technology is seen as an economic or a national security threat. In China, new mobile phone subscribers in China will be required to furnish key personal information – information that will be available to the government. The new rules for mobile registration are part of an effort to crack down on “the global scourge of spam, pornographic messages and fraud on cellular phones" in the world’s largest mobile-device market, according to the government-approved English-language newspaper, the China Daily.

The blending of economic and national-security concerns can also be seen in the protectionist moves by Congress to limit sales of Huawei gear to U.S. operators.

Citing concerns over Huawei’s purported ties to the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and to the Islamist government of Iran, as well as its links to the Chinese military, a group of Republican Senators led by Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the Republican whip, wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner saying that, “We are concerned that Huawei’s position as a supplier of Sprint Nextel could create substantial risk for U.S. companies and possibly undermine U.S. national security."

Often the threads of politics, security, and protectionism are difficult to entangle in these disputes. Having seen the role of Twitter, for example, in the Iranian protests last year, authoritarian governments like China’s are determined to prevent new Internet-based communications technologies from undermining their control. And China has been engaged for years in protectionist policies to build a competitive tech and telecom sector – including vendors like Huawei, now the world’s No. 3 supplier of network gear.

New “indigenous innovation" rules in China “could limit foreign access to tens of billions of dollars in contracts for computers, telecommunications gear, office equipment and other goods" in the world’s fastest growing economy, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year.

At the same time, economic nationalism tends to rise at times of global economic tumult and rapid technological change. In Feb. 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, the influential British newsweekly The Economist warned that “globalization is suffering its biggest reversal in the modern era."

Fears of globalization may be at the root of U.S. congressmen’s opposition to Huawei, but there are valid security concerns as well. Writing about the Huawei dispute on the VON/xchange LinkedIn group, member Richard Schoenling compared the situation to earlier communications networks: “Foreign ownership of TV or radio networks has always been limited for national security reasons. … The wireless network should be no different — and since it is possibly more pervasive than TV or radio we should be more concerned about foreign dependence."

There’s no question, however, that the spread of telecommunications technology benefits users wherever they live. It would be a shame if paranoiacs in Beijing, New Delhi, or Washington D.C., managed to slow that spread.