While much of the nation’s attention to the area’s problems has recently focused on America’s successful efforts to send astronauts to and from the International Space Station, another vital phase of area politics quietly took place a few months ago. Sixty years after President Kennedy announced one of his two leading area initiatives, Intelsat Corporation (Intelsat SA), the outcome of Kennedy’s plan for a U.S.-led global satellite telecommunications program, has quietly announced that it has filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11. And while the corporation noted that its bankruptcy was actually good news, it’s not to realize that it marks the final conclusion (yes, there’s been a lot of conclusions) to this exclusive 1960s American Cold War initiative that probably had an impact. greater practical impact. in the symbol of the global area of the United States as our planetary area systems or even our landing on the Moon.
Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly for the first time in September 1961, Kennedy promised that the United States would “propose … a global communications satellite formula that connects the world through telegraph, telephone, radio and television. The day is not necessarily far from the time such a formula will extend the discussions of this framework to the 4 corners of the global in favour of peace. And in 1964, the U.S. initiative took the form of a treaty when six friendly countries joined the U.S.-led initiative. 30 years between 1961 and the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S.-designed and directed treaty organization, INTELSAT, arguably the ultimate global practical expression of the U.S. area program and one of the most effective cold war projects in the United States.
Through Kennedy’s international satellite organization (headquartered — not surprisingly — in Washington, D.C.), hundreds of millions of people and thousands of businesses and governments in Africa, South America, Asia, Oceania, Europe and North America were able to instantly make telephone calls, watch television programs, and transmit fax, telex and data among each other. This was the first instance of commercial, social and cultural “globalization” in the way we think of that term today.
Before explaining how and why the U.S. Core Area initiative succeeded and ended, or why it’s so important, keep in mind that today’s Intelsat company is promoting its Chapter 11 filing because it hopes this bankruptcy will allow the company to raise and raise about $1 billion. move satellite appliances from some key radio frequencies that cell phone corporations want for the expected tsunami of 5G wireless services. In return, the satellite company would get a grant from the U.S. government. About $5 billion, much more than its annual sales. When Kennedy and his advisers invented the concept in 1961 of sharing the tangible benefits of the U.S. area program with the rest of the global to fight the vast fortune of the Soviet Union with the first synthetic satellite and the first man in the area, you could hardly have imagined that at the end of this task there would be a bankruptcy announcement to unload government costs.
Although Kennedy’s commitment of September 12, 1961. “We decided to move to the moon this decade…” to be remembered for a long time and widely celebrated, it was his speech at the United Nations two weeks later, in which he delivered his generation American area percentage goal with the rest of the global program that really worried the global in the American area. Kennedy’s moment space initiative should be remembered today as we reflect on how to deal with global problems as varied as global warming, pandemics, the passage of the Internet, the status quo of bases on the Moon, and the exploration of Mars.
Kennedy’s moment-area initiative was as ambitious as his commitment to bring an American to the moon: instead of buying the benefits of his area program for himself (as we accused the Soviets of doing so), the United States percentage of the benefits of his area. program with our allies and with third countries around the world who are able to settle for an American business style and American leadership.
After years of negotiations with our allies and with some third countries around the world, and with the strong help of many civilian agencies and the U.S. Army, the result was a U.S.-organized, targeted and controlled intergovernmental organization across the U.S. generation in the form of communications satellites. These satellites would connect non-Soviet Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Oceania and elsewhere in a global network that helps phones, telex, television and data. The satellites would have probably been originally manufactured, introduced and managed through U.S. companies, but they would belong to all those countries as an organization and be controlled through them. In addition, the new area allocation would combine the efforts of companies, the military, the civilian program and the academy into a global multi-party enterprise. This effort, officially founded in 1964, was later called INTELSAT and was operated in its first decade through an American company, COMSAT. By 1973, 81 U.S. friendly countries had registered and the foreign organization had a dozen communications satellites.
It was a non-military good fortune of the Unparalleled American Cold War because it touched the lives of billions of people on each and every continent. (Full disclosure: at the height of the Cold War, I directed public relations systems and investors for COMSAT, at the time the largest owner of INTELSAT).
In the 1990s, however, the global had replaced in many ways: submarine fiber optic cables allowed television, telephone, or high-speed knowledge communications between widely used routes, such as the United States to Europe or the United States to Japan in a major decline. worth it that can be done. satellites; the Cold War was over and the foreign policy benefits to the United States from an organization of third-world allies and cold countries had been considerably reduced; and political leaders in America and Europe had followed a new telecommunications technique based on festival and privatization. Together, these points have led to a widespread festival on foreign satellites and the end of Kennedy’s Cold War satellite initiative.
In 2001, the foreign organization INTELSAT has become the so-called Intelsat Corporation, a personal company that competes with other satellite companies. After a series of debt buybacks that left the company with billions of dollars in debt, the company became public (Intelsat, SA) in 2013. Finally, almost all accounts are heavily burdened by their debts, the publicly traded company announced in May. Chapter 11 bankruptcy record for its creditors and to raise approximately $5 billion from the FCC for the reimbursement of radio frequencies that cellular operators want to use for new 5G wireless services.
This progression was, of course, a long way from President Kennedy’s ambitious announcement at the United Nations in 1961, or from president Johnson’s 1964 triumphant creation of the U.S.-led foreign satellite organization. And while Kennedy’s concept proved to be much luckier in political and economic terms than I could have imagined, by almost every account, the original concept of a “United Nations satellite led by the United States” had lost its usefulness many years earlier. But INTELSAT’s 30-year good fortune as a tool for U.S. foreign policy, a global business led by the U.S. And a fusion of military, civilian, advertising and other interests remains a vital style for classes that teaches us how we can fortunately deal with many new demanding global situations in the outer area – or on Earth.
Roger Cochetti provides consulting and consulting services in Washington, DC and was a senior executive at Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) from 1981 to 1994. He also led Internet public policies for IBM from 1994 to 2000 and then served as senior vice president and chief policy officer of VeriSign and Director of Group Policy at CompTIA. He has been a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy during the Bush and Obama administrations, has testified extensively on Internet policy issues, and been a member of FTC advisory committees and various United Nations agencies. He is the author of the Mobile Satellite Communications Manual.
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