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The aim of this paper is to report on the International Telecommunication Union Telecom World Symposium and Trade Show held in Hong Kong in December 2006.

The paper reports on some of the ideas presented at the symposium.

The paper finds that attendees got a first‐hand sense of Chinese ascendancy in information and communications technology (ICT) as well as the promise offered by ICT to bridge the digital divide.

The paper shows the ideas on bridging the digital divide presented at ITU World Telecom 2006.

Tracks the evolution of Internet interconnection and charging arrangements, drawing comparisons with telecommunication carriers’ arrangements. Focuses on how pricing arrangements could change ISP relationship’s nature from peer‐ to hierarchy‐based systems. Spotlights Internet basics and differences between telecoms and Internet pricing systems. Concludes that because of ISP, free riders and non‐explicit service subsidies, days are numbered.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the costs and benefits of local loop unbundling with an eye toward determining whether developing countries should pursue this strategy despite the significant controversy it has generated in the USA.

The paper examines arguments for and against local loop unbundling and determines which claims make economic, legal and practical sense and which claims support stakeholders' other public policy objectives.

The paper identifies legitimate reasons for favoring and opposing local loop unbundling. However, the paper also finds false justifications, unsupported by economic and legal principles, that serve incumbents' quest for further deregulation and securing greater incentives for investment in next generation infrastructure, and market entrants' interest in exploiting margins without having to invest in infrastructure. The paper provides recommendations on how developing countries can implement local loop unbundling that balances public benefits against specific downside risks and costs borne by incumbents or market entrants.

This paper supports conditional implementation of local loop unbundling by developing countries that concludes at a future date and incorporates desirable incumbent deregulation and liberalization.

The author has received no financial sponsorship from one or more of the stakeholders to prepare this paper. This paper offers an unbiased assessment of the benefits and burdens imposed by local loop unbundling.

Presents a review of the world's largest combined trade show and poly/technical forum, ITU Telecom 2003, which was held on 12‐13 October in Geneva. Reveals that there appears to be a migration towards an Internet ‐centric network, wireless technologies are becoming more developed and there is an increase in broadband access.

This paper seeks to examine the investment dimensions of next generation networks from a universal service perspective in a European context. The question is how new network infrastructures for providing access for everyone to communication, information and entertainment services in the present and future information society will be funded.

The paper starts by looking at the range of policy measures available for promoting broadband access. This is followed by an overview of existing and upcoming access network technologies. Before concluding, there is a section on alternative funding mechanisms, including a sub‐section on the potential of private public partnerships (PPP) in providing funding for broadband access infrastructures.

Although there is nothing in principle hindering the development of universal service policies from those that include a specific service and its underlying network technology towards more general access, other policy measures are likely to become more important in practice for the fulfilment of the universal service goal. Wide diffusion and de facto universal service will, to a higher degree, have to rely on other measures: alternative funding mechanisms and a wider range of policy measures to expand broadband take‐up.

The value of the paper is in its combination of two issues often discussed separately: alternative funding mechanisms and universal access. Furthermore, the implications of NGN are examined.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate characters and scenarios reflecting varied lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) identities in fiction in two library acquisitions platforms: a traditional library vendor (Coutts’ OASIS) and a freely available platform for self-published eBooks (Smashwords).

Using intersectionality as an approach, 200 LGBT fiction titles were examined in OASIS and in Smashwords with the goal of assessing the characters and scenarios represented. The hypothesis was that Smashwords’s titles, because they were self-published, would include more variety.

The titles in both platforms were roughly similar, with a pronounced focus on white gay males.

This research relied on limited metadata provided in each system. Additional research should evaluate the quality of the titles and the nature of the publishers.

Although the Smashwords eBook platform provides access to eBooks, a convenient way to consume genre fiction, the titles available do not represent more diverse LGBT identities than the titles available through a traditional library vendor platform, OASIS.

As libraries struggle with practical implications for selecting materials representing varied viewpoints, the question of self-published or indie eBooks has emerged as a potential option for providing these perspectives. The findings of this study indicate, however, that instead of reflecting a more diverse readership, the sample of Smashwords LGBT fiction eBooks examined largely resembles the materials that a library vendor provides.

Economic nationalism and the COVID-19 pandemic have led many to question the future of globalization. Given the fragility of the second wave, this chapter asks whether globalization is cyclical, sustainable only under the most propitious economic or political conditions or whether technological developments, especially the digital revolution, have changed the underlying structure of production in ways that markedly increase the cost of renationalization. Global production networks (GPNs) are discussed as an example of structural change, the emergence of a networked world economy that is both more extensive and intensive than in the past. The chapter concludes that the international economic environment will be unstable, as attempts to restore national independence and disaggregate GPNs run up against the reality of mutual dependence. While we are unlikely to return to independent national markets, the future shape of globalization is uncertain.

This chapter argues that modern societies are changing in ways that disrupt the complementarity between social structure and character structure. One source of this divergence occurs because, on the one hand, there exists a “neoliberal” character structure that is oriented toward the accumulation of human capital and holds that such accumulation and hard work will allow one to achieve the “American Dream.” On the other hand, the deep embeddedness of this character structure may in fact deepen the possibility of structural crisis, as developments in automation and ongoing transformations of labor continuously shift the economic structure and many feel they are employed in meaningless “soul crushing” jobs. This diagnosis prompts the question: is the accumulation of human capital futile? In other words, can there exist an abundance of jobs that simultaneously pay enough to provide a middle-class lifestyle and be both socially respected by most members of society while also providing subjective meaning for the individual – without accruing high social costs? Through reflections upon my own biography growing up in East Tennessee, this chapter utilizes the framework of Planetary Sociology to encourage sociologists to rethink the category of “human capital” and recognize the divergence of social structure and character structure to be a serious problem with planetary implications. Only by critical examination of the sociohistoric context from a planetary perspective can these challenges be constructively evaluated and reckoned with.

This case puts students in the shoes of the Ebola response leadership teams of Firestone Liberia and its parent company, Bridgestone Americas, as they worked together to respond to the deadly 2014 Ebola epidemic. While the companies had received positive press for their containment of the virus on their rubber farm in Liberia, which was home to 8,000 employees and 80,000 Liberian citizens, the situation off the property was worsening. With death counts rising and hospitals across the nation closing as staff caught the virus, the Liberian government declared a national state of emergency. The teams now faced the possibility that the government might attempt to take control of the farm's medical center. How could they balance their duty to care effectively for employees against the demands of the Liberian government? Should they try to fend off the government or cooperate to meet the government's demands? Students will learn how to do a methodical situation analysis that considers ethical obligations and strategic implications, and to distill their recommendation into a briefing for senior leadership.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.