Disciplines on Telecom Standards in US' FTAs : Main Features and Implications

미국 FTA의 통신기술표준 규범 : 특징 및 시사점

The Korea-US dispute on telecom standards has shown the inability of existing trade rules that can be applicable to standardization policy in telecom services sector. It has entailed plenty of dissenting but unsolved trade issues, including legal jurisdiction over technical standards on telecom services and their compatibility with WTO agreements. Question remains how US will cope with this tricky trade puzzle. This paper points out that Korea-US negotiations on telecom standards have provided US with a momentum to think seriously over the necessity of further rule-setting on telecom standards, and FTAs are the rescue train for US to ride on for that purpose. That is to say, US is taking advantage of FTA as a means to promote its national commercial goals by creating trade rules, which seek to deprive its trading partners of regulatory autonomy in telecom standardization. Based upon the research output, it is very important for Korean government in the upcoming Korea-US FTA negotiations to ensure facilitating public policy objectives in telecom standardization as possible as it can, and not to adopt the provision of international standards in the existing US' FTAs.