Regulation and Diplomacy in Telecommunications

The very concept of 'domestic regulation' in telecommunications comes from multilateral commitments of international trade in services, under WTO GATS. As international trade is a domain of multilateral and intergovernmental diplomatic relations, where regulation in telecom services, directly affect commercial and bilateral relationships of partner countries. Under WTO commitments Pakistan has opened up its telecom sector under De-Regulation Policy of 2003 and now the privatization process of PTCL (the national incumbent operator) is under way. Even after adopting the 'Technology Neutral' Policy, Pakistan's Telecom market is divided into two (2) main technologies i.e., CDMA (US) and GSM (European) technologies respectively. Further the policy has adopted to restrict the mobility of WLL (Wireless Local Loop) operators making the 'Technology Neutral' doctrine a paradox. Specific technology choices has activated forces of commercial diplomacy to play their aggressive role, to force the market into different directions of technology-choices. Here, Pakistan has earlier tried to liberalize some infrastructure sectors, like power and deep-sea fishing. These became wrong policy choices which even haunt the policy-markers today. At the time when this paper is written, Pakistan was in the mid of telecom policy evolution