Co-ordination, Co-operation, and Competition. The Creation of Common Institutions for Telecommunications

Sammanfattning: The telecommunications sector is an example of an industry that requires extensive co-ordination of e.g. technological, economic, and administrative factors in order to function as a unified system. The different actors in the sector normally have diverging interests concerning the choice of common rules. This has created a demand for institutional and organizational structures that can help the actors reach common solutions. This study shows that co-ordination through an international organization, CCIF, created a stable institutional environment for the participating actors. It also defined which type of behaviour was profitable for states and organizations that wanted to influence the CCIF's decisions. The most central actors of the CCIF were those that participated heavily in the organization's Plenary Assemblies and expert study groups.In this thesis it is shown that co-operation between the Scandinavian countries through informal agreements expanded and intensified both in scale and scope between 1900-1960. The individuals taking part in those agreements showed a very stable pattern over time. This indicates the evolution of a social network between the actors and organizations.On the national level the state had the formal power to impose its will on all the other actors. The liberalisation in the 1990's of the Swedish telecommunications sector led to the creation of a large set of new rules. This study shows that the need for a new regulatory function was coupled to the political objectives for the sector defined by the state.The results show that it is insufficient to regard the co-ordination of telecommunications as purely technical exercises. The strategic interests of actors were often based on other policy objectives than technical considerations.