Benchmarking Indian telecom service providers: a data envelopment analysis

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has observed as a powerful instrument for benchmarking the performance of various organisations when multiple variables are taken into account. The advantage of such an analysis is its competency to measure the efficiency of the firm in multifarious dimensions. Currently, rapid developments are occurring in telecom service sector. In such a milieu, an attempt for comparing and benchmarking various telecom service providers is of extreme relevance. This paper starts with a conceptual DEA model followed by efficiency estimation. 'Assets' and 'expenses' are considered as inputs. 'Profit after tax' and 'income' are taken as outputs. Four efficiencies named technical efficiency (TE), scale efficiency (SE), cost efficiency (CE), and allocative efficiency (AE) have been estimated. The results are supported by managerial implications and the scope for future research followed by the limitations of the study.