CIAO DATE: 01/02

Toward Sustainable Competition in Global Telecommunications: From Principle to Practice

Abstract

Until the 1980s, the governance and regulation of international telecommunications regulation was relatively straightforward. Telephone companies were state-owned monopolies that provided services within discrete national boundaries. International traffic was carried at rates mutually agreed upon by governments and their respective national carriers.

The nationalist, protectionist paradigm started to crumble in the mid-1980s as nations began liberalizing their telecommunications sectors. Parochialism was dealt another blow roughly a decade later when the international community codified its commitment to competition by enacting the Uruguay Round Protocol to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in May 1994, and thereby establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO). In February 1997, sectoral liberalization and international competition converged as WTO members embraced an agreement to liberalize basic telecommunications services within a competitive trade framework.

Toward Sustainable Competition in Global Telecommunications: From Principle to Practice (PDF File)