ABSTRACT
The world is in the midst of a new economic revolution equivalent in scope to the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. The strategic resource in this new economy is information. Telecommunications policies influence international trade in two fundamental ways. First, they can affect the operating costs of global enterprises that use telecommunications services to distribute information-based services or to coordinate global production and marketing activities. Second, telecommunications policies can affect market access where the provision of certain services is open to domestic but not international competition. International trade agreements can take one of two forms: either to establish principles, rules, and procedures for determining which government measures should be prohibited, or to change existing policy measures. The general agreement on trade and tariffs system gives competing enterprises from different countries considerable freedom to make commercial transactions within the framework established in trade agreements.
