National information infrastructure

The national information infrastructure (NII) represents the primary means through which communication occurs within a territory. In truth, the NII represents the latest stage in the evolution of national communications systems that had its antecedents in a strong dependence upon the transport system where messages where conveyed physically (see, for example, Huurdemann 2003). Over the past century and a half, the process has been increasingly de-materialised with communications shifting to its own dedicated infrastructure (see for example Brynjolfsson and Kahin 2000). In terms of territorial strategy, the NII (defined as the totality of the integrated set of digital and analogue telecommunications infrastructures within a territory) is intimate to meeting the infrastructural mandate though in some cases (notably with regard to security and control) this is often retrospectively (see below). In other cases, the state has been proactive in promoting the development of the NII as a means not only of promoting economic transformation and competitiveness but also of seeking to promote digital inclusion and to bridge (both actual and potential) digital divides (see, for example, Corrado and Van Ark 2016). Initially this chapter seeks to define the nature of the NII and assess the core contemporary features of such an infrastructure system. Thereafter the chapter moves on to examine the intimacy between the NII and the state’s infrastructural mandate focusing on the aforementioned reactivisim and proactivism in state territorial strategies. The term ‘information infrastructure’ is one that has fallen out of popular usage over recent years as initial policy