Telecommunications Stakeholder Perceptions of Teledensity: A Comparison of Stakeholders in the Latin American Region to those in Sub-Saharan Africa Victor Mbarika Southern University victor@mbarika.com Peter Meso Georgia State University pmeso@cis.gsu.edu Philip Musa Univ. of Alabama Birmingham musa@uab.edu ABSTRACT Prior research has identified specific factors that hinder growth of teledensity in developing countries and specific strategies used to overcome such limitations both in Latin America and in Sub Saharan Africa. Prior research has also reported on the perceptions that telecommunications stakeholders have on how various strategies can inform and assist in the enhancement of teledensity in each of the two continental regions. This study investigates similarities and differences in the telecommunication stakeholders’ perspectives of specific strategies used to address teledensity limitations in Latin America as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa. Independent samples of survey participants (Latin America’s and Sub- Saharan Africa’s telecommunications stakeholders) analyzed the strategies. Using appropriate statistical procedures we examined these stakeholders’ perceptions to find areas of commonality and difference in how their perspectives of select strategies. Qualitative comments to support the stakeholders’ responses are reported, together with future research implications. I. INTRODUCTION Teledensity is defined as number of main telephone lines for every one hundred inhabitants, and is a leading measure of the telecommunications infrastructures within a country (McCoy and Mbarika, 2005). Telecommunications infrastructures provide the base for important applications on the Internet, such as online education, and e-commerce while promoting resource mobilization through increased participation of the labor-force in a county’s economic activities. Although information and communication technologies (ICT) are fundamental to their socioeconomic development, developing countries were never in the position to exploit the full potentials of such technologies [Mbarika et al., 2002]. Several researchers have argued that low teledensity is a key reason for limited and or slow ICT growth in developing countries [Wellenius, 1984; Hunt, 1997; Odedra, 1993]. Prior research to our study has identified specific factors that hinder growth of teledensity and adoption of technologies in developing countries and strategies to address such factors [Mbarika, 2000, 2001; Musa, 2006]. In this study, we compare and contrast the perspectives of Latin American stakeholders and Sub-Saharan Africa Stakeholders about the strategies to address the obstacles to teledensity growth in each of these two continental regions. II. OBSTACLES TO GROWTH OF TELEDENSITY Bernt and Weiss [1993] proposed a framework that groups international telecommunications issues into four categories or issues: organizational, technological, financial, and geographical. • Organizational issues deal with the strategic structuring of telecommunications entities and the industry as a whole. This includes governmental monopoly versus competition, deregulation, and privatization. • Technological issues refer to the stock of telecommunications technologies that an organization or nation state selects to acquire and the maintenance of these pieces of equipment. • Financial issues concern the funding of the development and operations of a country’s telecommunications infrastructure. • Geographical issues deal with the universality of access to telecommunications infrastructure by the residents of a nation. Thus they relate to the provision of telecommunications infrastructure to urban and rural areas within a country. McCoy and Mbarika [2005] and Mbarika [2001], modified Bernt and Weiss’ framework by placing teledensity diffusion at the core and then employed the modified framework to evaluate the perspectives of stakeholders on the strategies for overcoming obstacles to teledensity. Their studies focused on Latin America [McCoy, 2005] and Sub- Saharan Africa [Mbarika, 2001] respectively. They justified their modification on the premise that teledensity is a measure of telecommunications infrastructure. III. STRATEGIES TO OVERCOME TELEDENISTY PROBLEMS Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2007 1 © 1530-1605/07 $20.00 2007 IEEE