Study On Legal Issues Of Trade In International Telecommunication Services

The industry of telecommunication has characteristics of natural monopoly andnetworked. It often relates to some factors, such as the allocation of nation’s scarce resources,national security and so on. Therefore, each government has monopolized its domestictelecommunication market and the management of the telecom enterprises, and imposed strictregulation of the telecommunications industry. With the advent of information globalization,the upgrading of information technology, the telecommunication industry is developing at anunprecedented pace, in the wave of information liberalization, each government graduallyopen its domestic telecommunication market in order to fit the development of globalization,deregulation and the introduction of competitive mechanism have become a trend in the world.So the international telecommunication service trade is becoming more and more important,information and the basic infrastructure for information’s store and transmit have becomeimportant strategic resources. In the information society, the international telecommunicationservice trade has been involved in the international economic, political, cultural exchangesand so on.Under the framework of WTO, the purpose of “General Agreement on Trade inServices” and several related accessories on the telecom is the telecommunication servicetrade liberalization, it requires each member shall not take the way which not matched by theGATS rules to limit the telecommunication service trade liberalization. However, the telecomindustry is closely related to national security, each government opening its domestictelecommunication market should take the importance of national security into account at thesame time. According to the requirements of WTO, China has committed to open basictelecommunications services and value-added telecommunication services, however, due tothe immaturity of the legal environment and management system in telecom industry, thetelecom industry in China did not reach the requirements of WTO on many levels, theproblems that China’s telecom industry facing with now can not only be solved by institutionreform and improvement of management, but China’s telecom market needs a law oftelecommunications.The telecom industry in China started later, telecom legislation relatively lags behind,the lack of regulations and related laws in telecom industry, to some extent constrained thedevelopment of China’s telecom industry. Based on the study of the “General Agreement onTrade in Services”,“GATS telecommunication service attachments”, and “the Agreement onBasic Telecommunications”, combining with the legislation practice of the foreign-relatedtrade in telecommunication services in foreign countries, this dissertation present acomprehensive analysis of the legal system of China’s telecom industry and its existingproblems, and based on this, put forward a proposal of perfecting China’s legal system offoreign-related trade in telecommunication services. This dissertation research the legal problem of trade in international telecommunicationservices by using the literature research, comparative research and case research, which ismade up of the following five parts:The first part is introduction, which explains the purpose of this study and itssignificance, introduces the previous legal researches of trade in telecommunication servicesin domestic and foreign, and gives the research methods and innovations of this dissertation.The second part is the generality of trade in international telecommunication services,this part introduces the related concepts of the trade in international services, including theconcept of telecommunication service, the concept of trade in internationaltelecommunication service and its four patterns, the summary of the legal framework of thetrade in international telecommunication services, and the related legal rules of the trade intelecommunication services under the framework of WTO.The third part is the legislation practice of the foreign-related trade in telecommunicationservices in foreign countries, which uses the comparative research to introduce the fourcountries’ legislation practice of foreign-related trade in telecommunication services,including United States, Britain, Japan, India. From the practice, this part sums up theenlightenment on China’s legislation.The fourth part is the analysis of the legal system of foreign-related trade intelecommunication services in China, including the WTO accession commitments intelecommunication services and the previous legislation of the foreign-related trade intelecommunication services, mainly introduces the “Acts on Telecommunication Regulation”and the “Regulation on Administration of Foreign Investment in Telecommunications”, andanalyses the existing problems of legal system of foreign-related trade in telecommunicationservices in China.The fifth part is a proposal of perfecting China’s legal system of foreign-related trade intelecommunication services, which put forward a suggestion for legal system offoreign-related trade in telecommunication services from three aspects, one is to enact thebasic law of telecommunication, the second is to perfect legal regulation of effectivecompetition in telecommunication industry, the final is to consummate the mechanism oftelecommunication management transparency.