lementations, and other benefits that decrease price and further increase acceptance of the new technology. This supports the economic development of the community by improving telecommunications services and decreasing their cost. Political interests often lead to different standards in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Standardization is not only a technical matter. Sometimes opposing political interests make the approval of global standards impossible, and different standards are often adapted for Europe, the United States, and Japan. To protect local industry, Europe does not want to accept American technology and America does not want to accept European technology. One example of a political decision in the 1970s was to define a differ- ent PCM coding law for Europe instead of the existing American PCM code. (We will explain this terminology in Chapter 3.) A more recent example is the American decision in the 1990s not to accept European GSM technology as a major digital second generation cellular technology. International standards are threats to the local industries of large countries but opportunities to the industries of small countries. Major manufacturers in large countries may not support international standardization because it would open their local markets to international competition. Manufacturers in small countries strongly support global standardization because they are dependent on foreign markets. Their home market is not large enough for expansion and they are looking for new markets for their technology. Standards make the interconnection of systems from different vendors possible. The main technological aim of standardization is to make systems from different networks "understand" each other. Technical specifications included in open standards make systems compatible and support the provi- sion of wide-area or even global services that are based on standardized technology. Standards make users and network operators vendor independent and improve availability of the systems. A standardi