Resumen

HURTADO, Diego  y  LOIZOU, Natasa. Deregulation of Strategic Sectors in a Semi-Peripheral Context: Satellite Communications in Argentina, 1991-2006. Am. Lat. Hist. Econ [online]. 2019, vol.26, n.1, e939. ISSN 2007-3496.  https://doi.org/10.18232/alhe.939.

In 1994, Nahuelsat –the first satellite communication firm based in Argentina and European majority shareholders– was created. We reconstruct the Nahuelsat trajectory from primary sources and analyze its performance and the reasons leading to its collapse in 2006 as a case study of the performance of a firm within an economically strategic sector in a semi-peripheral country. We find that satellite communication privatization and deregulation, the State inability to influence the global “rules of the game”, as well as the lack of incentives oriented to coordinate their activities with the Argentine space policy and to produce embeddedness in the local economic ecosystem help explain the unfeasibility of Nahuelsat, despite the very positive “signals” of the regional market. The analysis of the decision-making process shows the incompatibility between the dynamics of the global big corporations and the deregulation initiatives of the sector.

Palabras llave : satellite communication; semi-peripheral neoliberalism; strategic industry; Nahuelsat.