This [paper] contends that collective support for high technology development largely depends on variation in relative economic and industrial competitiveness and that it better explains behavior and strategies for satellite navigation and wireless Internet in the European Union and the United States. The relative international positions of EU and U.S. (and Japanese) economies and high-technology capabilities are different today compared to the 1980s and 1990s and have been strengthened in several areas, followed by EU and U.S. industrial support that in many instances has become more global in orientation. The U.S. approach to wireless Internet, influenced by a relatively weaker competitive position in industrial terms, has been aimed at creating a level-playing field and objecting to EU industrial policy. It eventually supported a free market orientation, but only after aggressive lobbying on the part of a number of industrial coalitions against the interests that promoted American CDMA technology (code division multiple access). Its approach to satellite navigation has been aimed at both supporting national security priorities and, through explicit industrial policy considerations, CPS as the dominant global standard
