cce blog

the plundering has begun

When time comes for Iraq to rebuild, they'll need food, water, shelter, and ... American cell phone technology, of course! This last Wednesday Congressman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif) introduced a bill requiring that the US Agency for International Development and the Department of Defense use American CDMA technology instead of the more widely-used GSM wireless standard in "any such contract for the provision of commercial mobile wireless communication service."

CDMA is a technology patented by QUALCOMM, Inc. that is used in the US mobile phone network. GSM is a similar technology used in Europe and almost every other mobile phone network in the world. A GSM phone can be taken from London to Hong Kong to Cambodia to Qatar and still work, whereas an American phone needs to be "multi-band," i.e. built to support both CDMA and GSM. All the other Middle Eastern mobile phone networks are GSM. So what's the difference? Simple: QUALCOMM gets royalties for CDMA, whereas European competitors Nokia and Ericsson prefer GSM.

It is commendable that Representative Issa cares so much about the Iraqi people that he is involving himself (and Congress) in even the smallest details of the reconstruction plans. Obviously these kinds of questions must be answered: metric or imperial? Windows or Macintosh? Skim or regular milk? Diesel or unleaded? CDMA or GSM? But "in wartime," is it really a pressing legislative issue to require Iraqis to use American patented technology in their cell phones?

Halliburton has already arrived in Iraq: I've seen them on TV, in their orange jumpsuits, talking on BBC about how much capacity they'll be able to pump (for the benefit of the Iraqi people, of course) in a few months. The press calls them "civilian firefighters," and they've been outsourced to put out the Iraqi oil fires.

Perhaps in response to public suspicion about links between the firefighting contract and Cheney's status as former CEO of Halliburton, USAID confirmed yesterday that Halliburton is now out of the running for bids on lucrative construction contracts for highways, bridges, airports, and buildings in postwar Iraq [Newsweek, Washington Post]. The profits from these contracts will be given to other American companies instead. The highways and bridges will be provided free of charge to a grateful Iraqi people, of course -- or maybe USAID will decide to dock the construction costs from Iraq's oil profits.

Of course, once the Iraqis have all these spiffy new highways and bridges to drive on, they're going to need Fords and Chryslers and SUVs to drive around their new, liberated country. I'm sure it's every Iraqi's dream: cruising down the new American-made highway, getting stuck in traffic at the new American-made bridge, and using the new American cell phone to let the family know that you'll be running a bit late.

Posted by cce at March 31, 2003 02:35 PM | TrackBack