Bjorn Wellenius

Telecommunications in developing countries

The conditions in which telecommunication services are established and expanded in the developing countries are very different from those experienced in the industrial nations. The author provides insight into the peculiarities of the telecommunication sector in developing countries, discussing characteristics related to the structure of the sector, system size and quality, telecommunications as a business, limitations to faster growth, and some particular problem areas, including the impact on economic development, especially in rural areas, training and education directed towards high technical and managerial positions, and the manufacture of equipment.

Investment and growth of the information infrastructure: summary results of a global survey

The information revolution has spread globally, but reliable data are not readily available on worldwide information infrastructure investment, growth, revenues, and breakdown between developed and developing countries. As a step towards overcoming this shortfall, in 1999 infoDev commissioned Pyramid Research to review and collect data in 60 countries, extrapolate to the rest of the world, and aggregate by developing regions and for the OECD. This note summarizes some of the initial results.1

Some Recurrent Problems of Telecommunications in Developing Countries

The expansion and improvement of telecommunication services in developing countries is faced with a number of problems of implementation and of method. The problems of implementation have well-established solutions and, therefore, are only briefly discussed in this paper. The main focus of this paper is concentrated on four classes of problems related to method, namely: 1) demand forecasting and its impact on system performance; 2) economic evaluation with special regard to social factors; 3) pricing; and 4) technological dependence on foreign countries. The problems need considerably more research and field work before results of any permanence and general validity are obtained. The paper concludes that dealing with these and related problems of method needs an essentially interdisciplinary approach. It further suggests that only some international technical and development organizations may, in the foreseeable future, be in the position to undertake interdisciplinary sectoral telecommunication studies of adequate breadth and depth to yield meaningful tools for better utilization of the scarce telecommunication resources in developing countries.

On the Role of Telecommunications in the Development of Nations

Both in developed and developing nations there is a clear need to discriminate among all the numerous choices of telecommunications technologies and services that have been, are, or can be developed. This discrimination should be based on a knowledge of the likely effects of each of those services on the community and its environment; discrimination can no longer be left open to the sole forces of the market and it is within the engineering function to provide value judgments on the technologies it produces. In developing nations where there is a strong shortage of capital, the telecommunication planners problem is not one of satisfying demand indiscriminately at fair prices ensuring a reasonable financial return to the firm but rather to find a strategy of service growth that will be optimal for the country or parts thereof. The comparison of alternative investment plans in the telecommuncations sector should proceed, therefore, attending to the measure in which each one can contribute towards these general objectives. Inasmuch as progress towards the different national targets is unlikely to allow for a single measure common to all of them, investment plans that are optimal with regard to different targets will also not be comparable with one another and the choice between optimal plans escapes the sector and becomes a matter of subjective national policy. Telecommunication planners should be able to find such optimal strategies and to supply global planners with elements of judgment suitable to support the decision of allocation of resources to the telecommunication sector. A review of published material in this field shows that progress towards such a situation has been very small. The paper then discusses some ideas on how the study of interaction between telecommunications and society could be advanced within a frame of reference given by current knowledge in the social sciences and in telecommunication technology.

Hidden Residential Telephone Connections Demand in the Presence of Severe Supply Shortage

A survey in Santiago, Chile, shows a total unsatisfied demand for residential telephone connections which is four times as large as the waiting list. Factors hiding the demand include nonownership of homes and excessive delay in providing new lines.

Estimating Telephone Necessities in Developing Nations

The whole process of fundamental planning for a national telecommunication system is based on estimating and projecting accurately the demand for telephone connections. Traditional methods are inadequate when dealing with supplylimited markets, where there may be a large hidden demand. In such cases the first target may be to upgrade the system until it matches the socioeconomic level already attained by the nation and its regions. An approach to this problem is set forth including a definition of the market and its sectors, classification of areas, sampling, and surveying. Several recent examples of application of these principles to the Chilean system serve as illustrative material, and an application of traditional solutions at the regional level obtained from CCITT GAS-5 international trends is compared to the results obtained by the field approach.