Abstract

Two historical trading agreements were made in the early part of 1997 at the World Trade Organization (WTO). One is the WTO agreement on basic telecommunications services and the other is the Information Technology Agreement (ITA). With the ITA and the basic telecommunications agreements, the firm ground for advancing the vision of the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) is now established. This paper reviews the essential elements of the two agreements, discusses and analyzes how they are related to the advancement of the GII.