The regulatory imperative

摘要

Anybody who is somebody in the communications business knows it. Many Internet Protocol (IP)-minded entrepreneurs know it too. And indeed, any satellite communications executive worth his salt knows it. It is no secret that a key component of Asia's recent economic turnabout is the region's contribution to the global growth of Internet traffic. This is doubling roughly every 100 days, with annual growth rates of more than 700 per cent. Currently, there are more than ten million Internet users in just five nations in the Asia-Pacific region - Australia, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and India - and Salomon Smith Barney predicts that they will increase to 16.8 million by 2001. The satellite industry stands squarely in the middle of this growth.