The Data Support Needed for the Selection of Telecommunication Suppliers

Telecommunications deregulation has been a fast process in the Nordic countries, inspired by the example of the United States and the U.K. Europe at the moment finds itself in a very polarized state as regards to telecommunications markets. The above mentioned states already have a liberal telecommunications market, some others are on the road towards that end (Germany, Ireland), but many still opposite the idea of free telecommunications market, mainly on the basis of losing the profitable monopoly for the state-owned PTT. This new free-market situation, combined with various technology changes such as ISDN, ATM and mobile and wireless in-house technology, has but heavy stress on telecommunication services buyers. New worlds such as the Internet have been opened in recent years. It is no more as clear as for five to ten years ago what one should buy, from whom and what would be the right price. However, many organizations are not prepared for this new situation. Not enough attention is being given to telecommunication acquisitions, and many existing solutions would be found to be unsatisfactory if more closely studied. The idea of this article is to wake up attention of management to telecommunication issues. Key point to take care of are summarized in a framework. The article begins with a short introduction to the change processes taking place in telecommunication markets and reviews some main contributions to the academic literature on telecommunication management.