This week marks the start of my research into the various levels of e-commerce and how they fit into Free Trade Agreements. One point that was made in several of the articles was that one can’t have e-commerce without the ‘e’ — referring to the fact that personal computers and internet access are necessary precursors to building e-commerce in a country. This ties into issues of the digital divide, in the case of DR-CAFTA, in both the US and its developing country partners.

To me, Chapter Fourteen of DR-CAFTA reads pretty weak on the issues that are commonly associated with e-commerce, such as internet governance, security and reliability issues, content regulation and so on.

Recognizing the global nature of electronic commerce, the Parties affirm the importance of: (a) working together to overcome obstacles encountered by small and medium enterprises in using electronic commerce;… [Link]

Though in the USTR’s summary of the agreement, the parts in the chapter regarding customs duties and non-discrimination are ‘a major advance over previous international understandings on this subject.’ [PDF Link].

But if you step back and realise that increasing levels of internet access depend on bridging the digital divide, then the telecom section of DR-CAFTA becomes quite important to the e-Commerce equation. Now it remains to be seen whether deregulation of the telecoms markets in these countries lowers prices and encourages consumer uptake. I mention consumers, because I imagine that the business-to-business (b2b) side of e-commerce might already be getting what it needs. Deregulation, in my opinion, would probably have the most impact on consumer-oriented e-commerce (c2c and (b2c). I’ll post if I find sources discussing this issue.
Surprisingly, the first effects of telecoms deregulation might actually be m-commerce — commerce based over mobile phones. The Economist has a mention of the blooming of m-commerce in Africa. [Link]. The article mentions a new firm, backed with private investments and aid money that:

[is] a simple sort of eBay for agricultural products across a dozen countries in west Africa. It lets buyers and sellers indicate what they are after and their contact information, which is sent to all relevant subscribers as an SMS text message in one of four languages.

This is a whole other topic in itself — entrepreneurship focused on development. But looking at the mobile phone industry and m-commerce is an interesting avenue to explore in these treaties.

Over at the Adam Smith blog, commenting on the same story, they write that this is an example of entrepreneurial:

[s]earchers [who] are more likely to be fiddling about with what is available and seeing what can be used to do what.

How the deregulation takes place, and the opportunities that it creates (assuming that it does so), will be interesting to watch. Just because e-commerce evolved a certain way in the places like Europe and the United States does not mean that this is the way it has to happen in Latin America.