Industries without smokestacks: Telecommunication and ICT-based services trade

This paper provides a basic understanding of the nature of emerging key information and communication technologies, and establishes the distance of countries from high-quality access to the internet - the necessary threshold one needs to cross in order to make use of such technologies. The paper underlines the importance of governments creating a more open and competitive environment to attract infrastructure investment (in terms of fibre-optic rings and cable links, among others), and foster rivalry among suppliers of devices and mainly services, thereby benefiting users with lower prices and better-quality services so as to steer societies away from being marginalized by the information and communication technology revolution.