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Democracy & Technology Blog Andean Free Trade Agreement would spread harmful regulation

Word is the U.S. Trade Representative is prepared to capitulate to a South American country that wants to regulate mobile phone service like a state-owned monopoly. Colombia is pushing the plan, which flies in the face of all the available evidence that wireless is as competitive as you can get, and is contrary to recent Free Trade Agreements with Chile, Singapore and Central America.
Colombia wants language included in the Andean Free Trade Agreement defining CMRS as a “major supplier” that should be subject to confiscatory regulation that was in vogue at the FCC in the Clinton years. Bureaucrats at USTR reportedly like the idea.

Hance Haney

Director and Senior Fellow of the Technology & Democracy Project
Hance Haney served as Director and Senior Fellow of the Technology & Democracy Project at the Discovery Institute, in Washington, D.C. Haney spent ten years as an aide to former Senator Bob Packwood (OR), and advised him in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Communications Subcommittee during the deliberations leading to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He subsequently held various positions with the United States Telecom Association and Qwest Communications. He earned a B.A. in history from Willamette University and a J.D. from Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.