An Analysis of Wireless and Value Added Services on the Regional Dispersion of Telecom Services in Developing Countries

Telecommunications in developing countries lack adequate planning and policies, so their telephone densities show the lowest values worldwide. The failure in considering the complexity of the regional telecommunication system in developing policies and technological strategies has increased the telecom gap between other regions and this particular sector of the world. We used a system dynamics modeling approach as a methodology that deals with the complexity of the system in order to evaluate existing access technologies and value added services in telecommunications that could improve the dispersion of regional telephone services in developing countries. The role of Wireless Local Loop and cellular systems, which have low deployment delays, was found to be crucial on the growth of telecom infrastructure. The voice mail and prepaid payphone service implementation improved the telephone access in developing countries.