'New order' or business as usual: uncertainties and issues for frequency policy and WARC 79

One by one previously calm, traditional areas of telecommunications planning and policy have been upset and their landscapes changed beyond recognition by technological and social change: examples now familiar include the revolution in network planning brought about by digital and stored-program technologies, and the steady trend, most notable in the USA but increasingly visible in Europe, towards more competition, initially in such 'peripheral' areas as the supply of terminals and the development of private 'affinity' networks. At the same time international affairs have been transformed in the past twenty years by such factors as the increasing assertiveness of the developing countries, the growing importance of international cooperation and international institutions in a high-technology world economy, and the new world role of China. All these forces converge in the international process of frequency-spectrum regulation carried on through the International Telecommunication Union and due for thorough-going review at the General World Administrative Radio Conference to be held in September 1979 (WARC 79), the first such conference for twenty years.