FORMAL STANDARDS-SETTING FOR GLOBAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION-SERVICES - TOWARDS AN INSTITUTIONAL REGIME TRANSFORMATION

This paper reviews the nature and economic significance of the activit ies carried on by standards development organizations (SDOs), focusing in particular upon the telecommunications and information technology standards-setting work of the government-created public and quasi-publ ic institutions, and the international treaty organizations that const itute the formal standards sector. It documents the current sources of tension within this regime and appraises various proposals for organi zational reforms. There are especially pressing needs for adaptations of the inherited institutional mechanisms for technical coordination t o provide for inter-operability in the development of new telecommunic ation networks and services. Among the manifold sources of strain on t he old structure, those which seem at once most fundamental and potent ially most threatening are the recently heightened industrial percepti ons of the potential strategic value of standards as tools of business competition and national policy, and the incentives for 'institutiona l by-pass' that have been created by the rapid proliferation of techno logical possibilities, The paper considers some alternative organizati onal models for negotiated standard-setting that might be able to with stand, and better harness these forces for the continued production of standards as public goods. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd