Modeling Telecommunications Demand Analysis

Over the last 20 years, legal and regulatory decisions, culminating in the divestiture of the Bell Operating Companies (BOCs) by American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) in 1984, have led to an upsurge in the importance of applied econometrics in the telecommunications industry. Increased attention to demand analysis, or empirical economics, has fostered a commensurate increase in modeling sophistication—both for the analyst and for the underlying modeling component of decision support systems. Whereas (aggregate) pooled regression models were more appropriate for the rate-case environment, (disaggregate) optimization-based models have proved more useful for the marketing orientation. Stand-alone analytical systems are no longer sufficient. The critical transition in organizational perspective reflects a need for integrated modeling environments that offer multiple modeling paradigms, linkage among models, consistent access to data resources, and intelligent support.