Proceedings of the Workshop - United Nations Office for Outer ...

188 POSSIBLE INTERNATIONAL REGULATORY FRAMEWORKS, INCLUDING LEGALCONFLICT RESOLUTION IN EXPANDING SPACE COMMERCIALIZATIONwithout any end-to-end change in the form or content ofthe customer's information. Public telecommunicationstransport network is defined as the publictelecommunications infrastructure which permitstelecommunications between and among definedterm ination points. F inally, inter-corporatecommunications is explained as telecommunicationsthrough which a company communicates within thecompany or with or among its subsidiaries, branchesand, subject to a Member's domestic laws andregulations, affiliates. The legal determination of theconcepts of subsidiaries, branches and affiliates is leftto domestic law. The definition excludes commercial ornon-commercial services that are supplied to companiesthat are not related subsidiaries, branches or affiliates,or that are offered to customers or potential customers.The transparency requirement obliges Members tomake relevant information on conditions affectingaccess to and use of public telecommunication transportnetworks and services publicly available. This includestariffs and other terms and conditions of service,specifications o f technical interfaces, information onbodies responsible for relevant standardization,conditions applying to the attachment of terminal orother equipment, and notifications, registration orlicensing requirements (Section 4).Access and use o f public telecommunicationstransport networks and services for foreign serviceproviders must be accorded in a reasonable and nondiscriminatorymanner for the supply of a service in asignatories schedule (Section 5). Such access and usemust be granted for any public telecommunicationstransport network or service offered within or acrossthe border of that Member, including private leasedcircuits. A number o f further obligations are set forth,including permitting customers to purchase or leaseattachment equipment o f their choice, to interconnectprivate leased or owned circuits with public networks,and to use operating protocols of the services suppliersor customer's service suppliers, and for access toinformation contained in databases or otherwise storedin machine-readable form in the territory o f anyMember. On the other hand, a Member is entitled totake measures to ensure the security and confidentialityo f messages or to safeguard the public servicesresponsibilities, to protect the technical integrity o f thenetworks and services or to ensure that no services areprovided outside the scope of a Member's schedule.The Telecommunications Annex recognizes thespecial needs o f developing countries and encouragestechnical cooperation to establish an efficient, advancedtelecommunications infrastructure to expand their tradein services (Section 6). It finally also stresses theimportance o f global technical standards forc o m p a tib ility and in te r-o p e ra b ility o ftelecommunications networks and services, requiringcooperation with relevant international bodies, such asthe International Telecommunications Union and theInternational Organization for Standardization (Section7).Specific Commitments of StatesThe legal regime governing the liberalizingcommitments o f Members is mostly based uponArticles XVI and XVII o f the GATS. The actual degreeo f liberalization under the GATS is depending on theservices included in a country's schedule. In otherwords, the Agreement only applies to those serviceswhich each individual state has agreed to accept in itscommitment to liberalize. Most countries found itrelatively easy to make such commitments concerninga range o f value-added telecom services (i.e. on-linedata processing, on-line data base storage and retrieval,electronic data interchange, e-mail and voice mail), andas a result o f the Uruguay Round they were alreadycovered by 44 Schedules, representing 55 WTOmember states. The problem of the liberalization of”basic” telecommunications services was dealt with onthe basis o f the Ministerial Declaration on BasicTelecommunications and the Annex on Negotiations onBasic Telecommunications which allows countries tomake MFN exemptions at a later stage than foreseen inthe GATS.The agreement on the problem o f how to define”basic telecommunications” on the national level wasset aside in the negotiations which included all publicand private telecommunications services concerningend-to-end transmission of customer supplied