CRESC Working Paper Series Working Paper No. 99 The Bermuda Agreement 1945 Richard Collins CRESC, Open University May 2010 For further Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) information: Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK Tel: +44 (0)1908 654458 Fax: +44 (0)1908 654488 Email:
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[email protected] Web: UUwww.cresc.ac.uk The Bermuda Agreement 1945 Richard Collins Abstract The end of the Second World War saw the renegotiation of the governance of global telecommunications. The dominant incumbent, the British Imperial (later Commonwealth) network centred on the Cable and Wireless company, experienced multiple changes: the tightly integrated and collaborative imperial governance system fell away as the governing partners (notably Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK) increasingly pursued their own, rather than a collective agendas; Cable and Wireless’ historical monopoly began to give way to a competition and interconnection based regime as American firms and their networks demanded interconnection with the Imperial “legacy” network; and Cable and Wireless was nationalised. Though key elements of the Bermuda Agreement sealed at the Bermuda Conference of 1945 were soon to be renegotiated, the Conference, at which the old global hegemony, centred on the UK and its partners, negotiated a new global communications order to accommodate the new global hegemonic power, the USA, was the fulcrum event of these transitions. Drawing on primary