ACCOUNTING RATE SYSTEM AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Did the Developed nations enact strategies that they knew would lead to the detriment of developing countries as it relates to their telecommunications revenue. FCC for example mandated that US telecommunications providers pay only up to a specified rate for terminating calls into developing countries, consequently leading to a significant drop in revenue for these nations. Further the regime in place for international internet connections require that developing countries pay for both legs of the circuit. So not only are they not receiving any revenue for terminating data on their networks, they have to pay the tier 1 ISPs to do so. In addition, they also have to pay the same tier 1 ISPs to terminate traffic on their networks.

As communication moves from old Legacy systems to NGN systems more traffic from developing countries would be sent over the internet. Thus if this situation continues unabated wouldn't that mean that the ISPs of developing countries would continue to pay higher rates to have access to the internet as more and more bandwidth would be required. The resulting effect would be users of developing countries paying higher cost for internet access than users of developed countries and developing nations receiving none of the royalties they use to receive for international traffic terminating on their shores. Welcome to the global village, where might is right and different rules apply depending on what side of the divide you reside.

Are there any possible remedial measures that can be implemented. Many have suggested the use of IXPs and aggregation of traffic to points where more reasonable interconnection rates could be negotiated. However physically the developing nations are dispersed geographically and culturally this level of collaboration may difficult to achieve.