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Telecommunications Services Trade and the WTO Agreement , Record No.: RS20319, Date: December 23, 2002 1 (December 23, 2002)

handle is hein.tera/crser0157 and id is 1 raw text is: Order Code RS20319 Updated December 23, 2002 CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web Telecommunications Services Trade and the WTO Agreement M. Angeles Villarreal Analyst in Industrial Organization and Business Resources, Science, and Industry Division Summary World telecommunications services trade is growing and evolving very rapidly, appearing to corroborate expectations that the 1997 international agreement to liberalize trade in basic telecommunications services would greatly increase world trade in those services. While the agreement, under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), faces many obstacles to full effectiveness, it is expected to benefit the highly competitive U.S. telecommunications industries and facilitate world economic growth. Congress, as always, is concerned that trading partners adhere to their commitments. Essentially no bills in the 107th Congress were directly related to this issue, however. This report will be updated as events warrant. Context. The WTO Agreement on Basic Telecommunications Services, which concluded nearly three years of negotiations, occurred in a context of developments on several fronts - statutory, institutional, technological, economic, and structural. It appears to have spurred and to have been spurred by such developments. Statutory and Institutional. The Agreement was one event in a sequence of developments in international trade and U.S. law. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which included some liberalization of trade in enhanced telecommunications among Canada, Mexico, and the United States, went into effect January 1, 1994. The Uruguay Round Final Act entered into force January 1, 1995, after nearly a decade of multilateral negotiations to expand world trade under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It established the World Trade Organization, which replaced GATT.' The U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996, (P.L. 104-104), which aims to promote greater competition in U.S. telecommunications by removing Congressional Research Service *** The Library of Congress See CRS Report 98-928, The World Trade Organization: Background and Issues, by Lenore Sek.

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