Thesis Complete 5 chapters

ABSTRACT

Market forces are often unable to deal with environmental problems due to the inability of the economic system to internalise environmental costs. Telecommunications around the world are “service” companies that are considered to have little impact on the natural environment - and as such were excluded from participation in EMAS. However, new research into British telecommunications has revealed extensive environmental impact through consumption of considerable quantities of the global resources. But the rate of change in this sector is greater than any other business sector, and telecoms are now reducing their environmental impact as a result of technical developments, the global market forces of liberalisation, privatisation and competition. The global impact of telecommunications developments on travel and lifestyles is also poised to have a significant positive effect on the environment, through changes in working practices as well as impacting on both indoor and outdoor leisure activities.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT1

TABLE OF CONTENTS2

CHAPTER I3

CHAPTER II13

CHAPTER III83

CHAPTER IV97

CHAPTER V102

CHAPTER I

Introduction

It has taken 150 years to connect the world's first 900 million phone lines. The next 900 million will take a mere five years (Hoare, 1997, p. 1).

The telecommunications sector is currently experiencing phenomenal global change, with the liberalisation and privatisation of the sector, and this appears to be benefiting the environment in a number of unexpected ways.

The economic view is that information has long been considered to be the fourth production factor after land, labour and capital. Since the invention of the telegraph in 1833, the intervening 150 years of conventional telephone technologies in the 1980s have seen dramatic change. Yet these changes are dwarfed by the changes of the 1990s: major changes in technology have been related to the joining of telecom technologies with information technology (IT) such as satellite, fibre optics, Internet, multimedia, teleconferencing and so forth . Telecommunications are also said to be one of the most important and most competitive industrial sectors of the future; the Global Telecom Industry Revenue is predicted to be in the order of US£1,300 billion by the year 2000. The market segments of the global telecom service revenues in 1995 were: national telephone business accounting for 63 per cent of telecommunication revenue, international 10 per cent, mobile 14 per cent, others 13 per cent (Scales, 1997). The distribution of international telephone traffic by region of outgoing calls in 1995 was Europe 43 per cent, Asia 17 per cent, Asia Pacific 4 per cent, Americas 10 per cent and USA 25 per cent.

The initial start point for our research was our discoveries concerning British Telecommunication's consumption and procurement figures, as well as their award winning efforts to reduce the impact of their business on the environment. What was particularly interesting was our discovery of the “1 per cent” phenomenon which we describe later. We also discovered that the cost of standing charges for connection to a fixed household telephone service in the UK was three times higher than for the standing charges for provision of water, gas and electricity. Our interest also took ...