ABSTRACT
All the experiments with varying degrees of competition in communications and information services pose a fundamental problem of how to organize the world market. In organizing a broader framework for the world market, the authors find themselves subject to a round of experimentation with national regulation and changing national frameworks for communications and information policy. The United States, in bringing the free trade rubric to telecommunications and information services, is altering the meaning of the free trade rules themselves. The United States contends that free trade in communication services should operate as a guaranteed right of foreign investment, something that the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs has never been able to do in any other group and service. Although the United States remains the preeminent economic and political nation on average in the world, there has been a significant redistribution of international strength.
