[Air-l] Iran bans fast internet to cut west's influence

[Frank Thomas]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1924572,00.html

This sounds so well known:

The Sultan stopped the telephone in his capital before WW I.
In East Germany you got a telephone only if the State and the Party 
deemed you worthy of a private line.
In East Germany again, after the construction of the Berlin Wall the 
state youth organisation, FDJ, climbed on the roofs and oriented TV 
antennas so that they would not get "imperialist" TV stations.

But:
Twenty (?) years later, Western TV stations were so widely listened to 
that the state decided to feed them into local East German TV cable nets.

So, there is some hope that history might repeat itself.

This shows the interest of historical studies of communication systems, 
I'd say

- Frank

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Dr. Frank Thomas
FTR Internet Research
93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
France