 However, following the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the WTO, the 1988 Telecommunications Act was replaced with by the Telecommunications Act of 1998 which provided the legal framework to enable the emergence of a free and democratised telecommunications market on the island.This act also created the Mauritius Telecommunications Authority (MTA) as a regulatory body for the telecommunications sector.With the development of Information and Communications Technologies, the Telecommunications Act of 1998 was replaced by the Information and Communication Technologies Act of 2001.