Implementing Reforms in the Telecommunications Sector: Lessons from Experience »

The movement toward structural reform of the telecommunications sector which began in the 1980s, has become a veritable worldwide wave of change. Most organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, and a growing number of developing countries, have by now either completed major reforms or have these well under way. In 1991, the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation jointly hosted a seminar in Washington, DC, to examine the experience of implementing reforms in the telecommunications sector. This highly successful event brought together over one hundred participants involved in telecommunications reform in some fourty countries. This publication is the product of a collective undertaking to make available the main findings of the Washington seminar to a larger audience. It offers readers an up-to-date account of approaches to major policy and structural issues, describes practical experiences in Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe, and discusses issues related to investment, regulation, and implementation. Several recurrent themes are brought out, and a number of countries' experiences are examined successively from different angles.