International telecommunications services and the regulatory framework

Telecommunications refers to the transmission of verbal messages, numeric data, and pictures by wire and by the electromagnetic spectrum. For the past century and a half there have been revolutionary developments in the technology of telecommunications, and these changes have been central to the growth of the global economy. In reviewing the technological changes it is useful to divide the years between those from the mid-nineteenth century to 1945, and those after 1945 and to focus on the three interrelated and even overlapping forms of telecommunications — telegraph, telephone, and radio.

Telegraphy refers to the sending of information by codes over wires or through the radio spectrum, and it was the dominant form of international telecommunications from the mid-nineteenth century until after World War I when telephony assumed a more important role. In the 1830s and 1840s wired telegraph networks grew rapidly in Europe and North America. Efforts were soon made to link adjacent countries, and by the 1860s telegraph cables had been laid across both the English Channel and the Atlantic. Important technological developments in the early twentieth century were the emergence of radio telegraphy (used especially by ships) and significant increases in the transmission capabilities of cables.