Why telecom policy must be based on realistic notions of national sovereignty


Posted on February 23, 2016  /  0 Comments

The past weekend, I was quoted, not altogether coherently, in a piece on Google’s Loon pilot in Sri Lanka.

LIRNEasia Founding Chair and Founder Director of ICTA, Rohan Samarajiva made a few comments about the Google Loon project. He said, “I am no fan of outmoded notions of national sovereignty. A fragmented Internet where local data storage is mandatory is not the kind of Internet I prefer”. The Google Loon project is expected to offer easily-available Wi-Fi across the country and connected for instance through ISPs like Dialog or Mobitel with some part being free and the rest charged. Some IT industry officials have raised concerns that a free flow of information could be detrimental and invade the privacy of persons, etc. In response, Prof. Samarajiva said that, “No one is upset when another submarine cable lands on our shores. Why object to some other way of moving our data into the Internet cloud?”

As I was thinking about how to blog this, I came across the following quote from the Economist.

The flaw in this case lies in the tradition’s idealistic definition of sovereignty. For Mr Johnson and Mr Gove, being sovereign is like being pregnant—you either are or you aren’t. Yet increasingly in today’s post-Westphalian world, real sovereignty is relative. A country that refuses outright to pool authority is one that has no control over the pollution drifting over its borders, the standards of financial regulation affecting its economy, the consumer and trade norms to which its exporters and importers are bound, the cleanliness of its seas and the security and economic crises propelling shock waves—migration, terrorism, market volatility—deep into domestic life. To live with globalisation is to acknowledge that many laws (both those devised by governments and those which bubble up at no one’s behest) are international beasts whether we like it or not. If sovereignty is the absence of mutual interference, the most sovereign country in the world is North Korea.

It is said that Asia, led by the People’s Republic of China, is the last redoubt of notions of national sovereignty anchored on the Peace of Westphalia. It is high time we move on, especially in the field of telecom, where by definition, we transcend national borders.

Comments are closed.