The worldwide trend toward deregulation of public monopolies, combined with globalization and explosive growth in Internet use, has prompted rapid and fundamental changes in the telecommunications industry. Each type of provider offers its own suite of services and complexities. Deregulation, however, has created a convergence race as carriers fight to gain market share by offering new types of services, incorporating new types of technology and using new ways to sell those services.
Many carriers now offer everything from voice to data to Internet to security application services.
In addition, they are providing bundled and unbundled services and consolidated and unconsolidated customer billings, as well as buying telecommunication services from one entity and reselling them to another. This myriad of constantly changing services, technology and customer-driven billing practices makes for extra challenges when it comes to determining whether a particular service is subjec t to a particular federal or provincial sales tax in a particular jurisdiction. Multiple jurisdictions Conducting business in multiple jurisdictions is yet another new ball that carriers must learn to juggle. Carriers, both old and new, are expanding into new jurisdictions - across Canada, into the United States and overseas. The telecommunications industry is now very much a global industry, however, and many of the carriers are already operating on a worldwide basis or are very quickly moving toward that goal.