This project is a continuation of CITI's exploration of long-term trends and their near-term implications. The first was Integrated Broadband Networks, a project exami ning the issues involved in integration, i.e., in the implementation of a high capacity optical fiber network to provide integrated telecommunications services.

This was followed by our project Private Networks and Public Objectives, as a study on the centrifugalism on the user level that affects networks. We now are exploring a similar dichotomy - the forces of globalism and of localism that are transforming traditional telecommunications.

The telecommunications industry, long organized along geographic and product lines that were both a shield and a weapon, is being transformed by contradictory forces: the trend toward global expansion by carriers on the one hand and on the other hand the opening of local communications to alte rnative types of carriers. These transformations represent two sides of the same issue: a blurring of traditional market boundaries created through technical innovation, policy liberalization, user needs and initiatives, entrepreneurialism, and the increasing overlap of previously separated transmission technologies. The result is a complex web of network definitions, product and service markets, carrier types, technical standards, government policies, financial arrangements, and cooperative ve ntures.

Beyond Territoriality: The Rise of Globalism and The Future of Localism in Communications was initiated to identify, analyze and discuss these issues.