The WTO Legal Framework for Telecommunications Services and Challenges of the Information Age

Abstract

Much-discussed technological (r)evolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) has dramatically changed our lives. Significant technological changes of the ways and means of telecommunication, for instance convergence between telecommunications, computer (information) technologies and broadcasting, development of new generation networks (NGNs), and all-encompassing digitalisation, have become a driving force behind remarkable socio-economic shifts, which include ever-growing flow of data and information, continuously increasing importance of ICT in all spheres of life, as well as transformation of economic activities and of human participation in society. The socio-economic changes are considered by many scholars to be of such a fundamental character that they have led them to argue the dawn of a new type of society—information society also known as super-industrial society, as knowledge society, and by other names.