CompTel told U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) that 11 key trading...
CompTel told U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) that 11 key trading partners weren’t meeting market-opening obligations of World Trade Organization (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services and other trade agreements. That’s double number of noncompliant countries last year, association…
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said in comments filed Fri. Countries cited by CompTel were Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, S. Africa, Switzerland. Filing as part of USTR’s annual Sec. 1377 review of effectiveness of U.S. telecom trade agreements, CompTel said 4 others should be placed on watch list because of potential problems -- Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain. CompTel said it had 2 main concerns on trade: (1) Pricing and providing of local access leased lines. (2) High fixed-to-mobile termination rates. It said its members had faced variety of anticompetitive practices and trade barriers in those countries and expressed concern about lack of independent regulatory authorities in some of them. It noted, for example, that rates charged for local access leased lines in Brazil were “far from cost-oriented” and U.S. carriers were frustrated with Colombia’s “failure to adopt transparent licensing rules.” CompTel said China, since entering WTO, was taking positive steps but should establish independent regulatory body.