Parochial telecommunications standards

Setting electronic, procedural, software and hardware standards at by a nation to protect telecommunications interests from competition. This denies telephone equipment manufactures the economic advantages of producing for an large homogeneous international market. It discourages the development of new international services carried by telephone lines. It makes communications more time-consuming and less efficient for organizations exchanging a lot of data.

Almost every country has its own telephone plug. Even the new small plastic jack-plugs vary from one European country to another. In the UK the plug is just a few millimetres larger than on the continent. In Norway, it is the internal arrangement of the wires that differs.