Technology Taking Over Diplomacy? The ‘Comité Consultatif International (for) Fernschreiben’ (CCIF) and Its Relationship to the ITU in the Early History of Telephone Standardization, 1923–1947

This chapter discusses the establishment of the CCIF and its ‘independent’ history (from the ITU) up to 1947. It is argued that the CCIF was intentionally formed apart from the ITU, and became a birthplace for a specific “Culture of Standardization” of telecommunication equipment and infrastructure. This culture claimed independence from politics, shaped standard-setting, and subsequently impacted ITU governance and institutional arrangements. One core issue of this culture was indeed the engineers’ conviction that their own standard-setting was superior to all other kinds of standard-setting, e.g. by national delegates at international telecommunication conferences, invested with representative power. Self-claimed independency from politics and diplomacy, which didn’t share the language of “pure” technical rationality, since turned out to be a constituting element for international regulation and standardization of telecommunication. But was the birth of the CCIF indeed the sign of technology taking over diplomacy in that particular field of international telecommunication regulation? Was the framing of the CCIF itself totally free from politics?