Helsingør (Denmark), 28 January 1996
The Changing Relationship Between National and International Regulations
Opening Presentation by Dr Pekka Tarjanne
Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union
Center for Tele-Information (CTI) Course for Telecom Regulators
Good evening Ladies & Gentlemen,
This conference has been organized to discuss the changing relationship between national and international regulations.  With increasing interdependence between nations, this issue is more relevant and topical than ever.
We appear today to be going through a period of transition, in which regulators, subjected to various and often conflicting pressures, are searching for global solutions applicable to international and national problems. Domestic regulation alone may no longer provide solutions to complex global issues.
A recent example is the pressure exerted by Germany on online service providers offering service within its territory to block public access to services it considers unwholesome. But – given the nature of the Internet – there is nothing to stop that country’s citizens from obtaining the same services via service providers located in other countries. The scope for individual countries to act alone is becoming increasingly limited. But equally the problem applies to service providers. Compuserve decided to block access to all its customers worldwide rather than to lose its licence to operate in Germany.
Equally, it would not be possible for a single organization – such as the ITU, in the case of telecommunications – to regulate all issues across the board, even if it wanted to do so. Just as there has been convergence between the telecommunications, entertainment, broadcasting and information technology industries, there has also been convergence between the regulatory issues involved.
To see how future regulations might be formulated, we must look at how the present situation evolved:
Today’s international regulations are based on agreements made between European telegraph administrations over 130 years ago. And although an enormous number of changes and developments occurred in the subsequent century, these were of an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary nature. It has only been in the past decade that a true telecommunications revolution has occurred. 
By the early part of this century, there were monopoly providers at a national level in most countries, with international agreements between the respective governments to cover standards, tariffs, and telecommunications development. National networks were connected together to accompany and protect the development of the railways, handle government business and maintain close links with embassies and consulates.
Telecommunications at that time was in most countries provided – or at least controlled – by government institutions. At the international level, it was governments who entered into the first agreements, laying down tariff principles for international telecommunication services and service agreements. So although the need for international regulation emerged clearly, the relationship with national regulations was more or less one-way.
The development of a public international telecommunication infrastructure altered the relationship between national and international regulations. International regulations became more autonomous, in particular with respect to technical and operational standards, and use of the radio frequency spectrum. The one-way relationship gradually gave way to a subtle set of interactions, in which the mastery of technical progress, national interest and the elaboration of international rules were all important factors.
Some regard this period as a golden age of stability, network interconnectivity and system interoperability. But it contained within itself the seeds of change. In the past decade, digitization, increased bandwidth and signal compression have begun to usher in information superhighways. Pressure for competition from industry and large corporate users, along with profound social changes, have caused governments to re-evaluate their telecommunications role.
For centuries the world has been ordered on the concept of autonomous nation states; but that, too, is changing. The phrase “no man is an island” can increasingly be applied to nations, as interdependency, globalization and the integrated global economy affect us all. The fact that telecommunications is now seen as a tradable commodity – rather than a state-provided service – has led to even greater erosion of sovereignty. And the arrival of the global information economy has changed, and continues to change, the whole of society, from the way we communicate with other individuals, to the way that information is transferred, shared and used.
Issues such as the participation of the private sector, the possibility of creating global end-to-end systems, and the massively increased use of the Internet – as well as the introduction of competition into telecommunications markets – have meant that national regulators can no longer regulate in isolation from their counterparts in other countries.
There are many complex issues involved, such as national sovereignty, technical standardization, use of the radio frequency spectrum, intellectual property rights, and the safeguarding of privacy. And these cross the boundaries between organizations that have hitherto been able to act independently in the regulation of intellectual property rights, trade, telecommunications or international legal issues.
In recent years these issues have been tackled by the ITU in many ways - both formally and informally.  The Kyoto Plenipotentiary Conference in 1994 decided that the ITU needs a new formal tool - World Telecommunication Policy Forum.  The first one will take place in Geneva in October 96 and the discussions will be centred around GMPCS (Global Mobile Personal Communications Systems).
On the informal side we have e.g. organized five successful regulatory colloquia during recent years with the following topics:
1.	Options for Regulatory Processes (February 93)
2.	Universal Service (December 93)
3.	GMPCS (November 94)
4.	Interconnection (April 95)
5.	Trade Issues (December 95)
The reports of these meetings have been widely used by administrations, regulators and the private sector in developing and developed countries alike.
Historically, telecommunications providers have only been subject to the regulation of carriage rather than the regulation of content. This is perhaps the most complicated regulatory problem the international organizations will have to face in  the coming years. The desirability of regulating the content of international telecommunication services on the grounds of social harm needs to be balanced against the desirability of maintaining other principles, such as freedom of speech, access to information and diversity of opinion.
There are also practical problems relating to regulating the content of telecommunications services. These include issues related to the impossibility of policing the bits and bytes travelling around the world, and the high costs associated with blocking or censoring information coming from specific sources.
We already have the technology necessary for a global information society. But the global information economy – and society itself – will require a new system of rights and obligations, and a new system of regulatory principles. 
Above all, regulators must strive to guarantee that everyone has access to basic telecommunication services. This, along with other human rights, is most certainly the issue of this decade as well as the next one. The authorities responsible for creating a common international regulatory framework will have to work together in close co-operation. The relationship between national and international regulation has changed forever. Today's issues are global issues, and they require global solutions.
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