Of the 70 WTO members who agreed to the World Trade Organization’s Basic Telecom Agreement in Geneva in February, only 57 have incorporated the new legislation into national law – despite the much-trumpeted January 1 deadline for implementation. Among the countries whose major telecoms players still operate without having to comply with the deal, are Brazil, Argentina and Belgium. Members on Friday, confirmed February 10 as the final date for enforcing the Accord – at which point telecoms liberalization will go forward as planned. The meeting will reconvene on January 26 to accommodate any last-minute successes, said the official, although there is a second July 31 date set for countries that miss the first. Other countries who have yet to formally accept the Accord are the Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Philippines, Romania, Chile, Dominica, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea, and Poland. While Bolivia claims it will ratify the agreement within two or three months, Brazil looks unlikely to ratify the necessary telecoms regulations even by the July 31 deadline. The country’s telecoms legislation remains dogged by delays and legal uncertainty. Members that fail to ratify the treaty will almost certainly be prevented from gaining favored access to other domestic markets, most notably the US which has reserved the right to be selective about which international companies it will grant access to its home telecoms market. The problems meeting the deadline are not totally unexpected as there was only nine months between the reaching of the agreement and the January 1, 1998 deadline, as the WTO tried to keep to a deadline set for earlier talks, and in line with European telecoms deregulation’s, held in 1996 which failed to reach an agreement.
