Abstract
Thousands of islands are spread across the vast ocean which covers a third of the earth's surface. Telecommunication development has always presented challenges for their economical, political, and cultural development in this region.
This chapter will discuss firstly, how telecommunication was developed in the Pacific Islands with the launching of undersea cables in early twentieth century and how satellite communication and decolonization developed after the Second World War. Secondly, the chapter will discuss how Pacific Islands people utilize communication networks for their independent movements, even during the colonial time in Vanuatu. Thirdly, how Pacific regional organization utilized free satellite as windfall of US space development.
From these discussions, we will see that the Pacific Islands people and developing countries were not merely passive recipients of telecommunication technologies and its development, but were people who chose and fully utilized them for their political will for their own purposes.
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Hayakawa, R. (2016). Self-Determination for the Communication Policy in the Pacific Islands. In: Ishihara, M., Hoshino, E., Fujita, Y. (eds) Self-determinable Development of Small Islands. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0132-1_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0132-1_10
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