In most countries, telecommunications represents only 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product. But it is central to the rest of the economy, both in developed and developing countries. In banking and international finance, tourism and travel, commodity exchange, and in all export-oriented manufacturing, economic viability is increasingly dependent on global information and efficient electronic exchange. In a global information economy characterized by intense competition for new markets, telecommunications reform is a vital component of national economic policy. Information has become a means for firms to identify new opportunities, seize new markets, and to satisfy new needs.
Information is vital to corporate survival and it is critical to an economy's viability.
In recognition of this fact, in the last two decades, telecommunications policy in many countries has been formulated in the context of far-reaching global strategies. In Great Britain, for example, a liberalized telecommunications regime was intended to support and augment London's role as an international financial center. In the Netherlands national telecommunications policy was formulated to stimulate the development of electronic publishing and to promote Amsterdam as a point of access to Europe for international networks, in direct competition with London. A key objective of Australia's telecommunications policy has been to attract commercial traffic for Southeast Asia and to encourage financial services to locate to Australia. Unfortunately, the means for being able to be productive in the new global information economy are very unequally distributed.