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J Manag Gov (2013) 17:863886
DOI 10.1007/s10997-011-9203-4
Lourdes Torres Patricia Bachiller
Published online: 28 December 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2011
Abstract The telecommunications sector has undergone the most drastic changes in terms of market liberalization and has dominated the privatisation process in most countries in terms of the size of its assets and because this industry is the agship of public services. The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the efciency of eleven European privatised Public Telecommunications Operators PTOs from 1997 to 2005 and to determine whether privatisation, liberalisation and investment in infrastructure have increased their efciency or not. We make use of the DEA methodology to analyse the efciency of PTOs, as this model is especially appropriate to analyse organisations whose production process does not result in the obtaining of a product but in the delivery of a public service. In spite of the technological progress, our results do not show that the comparative performance of PTOs has grown signicantly during the period analysed. Therefore, we must take into account other factors such as privatisation, state regulation and organisational changes to determine their performance. From our study, we can conclude that not all companies have been able to adapt equally to the competitive market. The non-efcient companies have traditionally operated in a protectionist market and they continue in a monopolistic situation in spite of market liberalization.
Keywords Efciency Telecommunications Liberalisation DEA model
Europe
L. Torres P. Bachiller (&)
Department of Accounting and Finance, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Zaragoza, Gran Va, 2, 50005 Zaragoza, Spaine-mail: [email protected]
L. Torrese-mail: [email protected]
Efciency of telecommunications companies in European countries
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864 L. Torres, P. Bachiller
1 Introduction
The telecommunications sector is playing an increasingly important role in the development of the economy and of technological diffusion, and its infrastructure and new telematic services provide a fundamental underpinning for information economies. Modern technologies have reshaped the telecommunications market and signicant regulatory reforms have been carried out to respond to the rapid changes of the sector (OECD 2005). Governments have liberalised this sector, have established a regulatory framework and have created independent organisms to promote competition. Public telecommunications operators (PTOs) are still subject to political decisions, not only through the...