The use by the United States of World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement procedures to address Mexico's restrictions on international long distance telecommunications services was, in my view, a nearly unalloyed success. The United States took on Mexico's most powerful private stakeholder (Teléfonos de México), protected by a complex regulatory scheme in a technically complicated services sector, and showed that the WTO dispute settlement mechanism was up to the task. The parties were not able to resolve the matter through negotiation, and a panel proceeding ensued. But no appeal was deemed necessary, nor was Mexico's compliance challenged. The US Federal Communications Commission's international traffic statistics published in March 2006 indicated that the call volume from the United States to Mexico doubled between 2003 and 2004. It appears that much of that growth may have been driven by lower prices coming as a direct result of regulatory reform generated by the WTO case.

It was a great privilege to be one of the lawyers involved in the development and prosecution of the claims brought in that dispute. The case represents many ‘firsts’ – the first pure services dispute litigated in the WTO; the first dispute involving the interpretation of the ‘Reference Paper’ on basic telecommunications services; the first WTO dispute in which a panel applied WTO competition law. I describe below some of the lessons that I learned in the process that are not specific to the telecommunications sector.