International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

ICC recognizes that the rapid evolution in communications and information technologies now underway is fundamentally changing the nature of the marketplace in which services are provided to individual consumers and businesses. The era of state-owned monopoly telephone operators is giving way to an open and competitive marketplace where evolving services, new competitors and new opportunities abound.

ICC notes that technological "convergence" provides an opportunity to remove regulation where it was once thought necessary in non-competitive markets where such markets become truly competitive. Technological "convergence" is serving as a pretext by some to attempt to impose monopoly-era regulations on new or evolving activities that are provided in a competitive marketplace. Pro-competitive regulation of the basic telecommunications market as set forth in the WTO Reference Paper continues to be vital, where true competition does not exist. The ITU should resist any suggestion that convergence implies the need for more, rather than less, control of marketplace activities provided in a competitive environment.