The impact of liberalization and sector restructuring on rural telecommunications development in developing countries

Management of the telecommunications sector is undergoing drastic reforms in many of the industrialized and in a few of the developing countries. The paper reviews the current trends in the industrialized world and discusses how these trends will impact on the developing world in general and SubSaharan Africa (SSA) in particular in as far as the development of rural telecommunications is concerned. Operating entities in the industrialized countries are being restructured to make them become more business oriented, subject to competition and more exposed to risk. All these reforms fall under the umbrella of liberalization, deregulation, competition and privatization