Every day the business press writes about another potential or real telecom alliance reaching across national borders. While most link established companies in developed countries with the needs of emerging nations, others are solely within the developed countries. Two decades of strong economic growth, especially in China and Southeast Asia, have generated a huge need for new communications systems while simultaneously providing much of the ability to pay for them. The beauty is that they are not stringing copper lines as North America and Europe did in earlier times. Rather, they are building systems from scratch based on entirely new wireless technologies.
Some countries now have more wireless phones than wired ones.
Ambitious satellite systems that will become operational in the 1998-2002 timeframe will provide new global telecommunications infrastructures for all. Infrastructure is not cheap. Funding the remaining infrastructure is beyond the capability of most governments, even those in the developed world. From China to Macedonia, from France to Australia, government-owned telecom companies are being privatized to raise the capital to match their systems with tomorrow's needs. Moore's Law states that computer capability doubles every 18 months.