ABSTRACT
Telecommunication services were considered a public service, provided to residential and business subscribers on an essentially non-commercial, non-competitive basis. There was just one basic service, whether telegraphy, voice telephony or telex. The convergence of telecommunication and computing technologies in the 1970s made possible many new services by introducing computers into the telecommunication infrastructure and connecting computers to telecommunication terminal points on customer premises. Trade policy officials in Japan and the US perceived a trade-in-services agreement as affecting deregulation more than did telecommunication providers and users. Ascertaining opinions on which telecommunication services can be considered traded or tradeable was an important objective of the survey. Telecommunication trade agreements are being prepared bilaterally, as is the case with the US and Japan on international value-added network services, regionally by the European Community with its single telecommunication market, and multilaterally in the Uruguay Round.
