What determines demand for telecommunications services? : evidence from the EU countries before and after liberalization

This paper aims to investigate the main determinants of Telecommunications demand for European countries (EU). For this reason, a panel data set is used consisting of 19 EU countries over the period 1991-2010 capturing the years before and after the liberalization process. The goal is to clarify whether any changes in the demand of Telecommunications, as expressed by volume traffic in local, mobile and international market segments, are attributed to regulatory process or to some other major drivers so that policy implications can be drawn, taking also into account the magnitude of the relevant price elasticities. It turns out that the regulatory process does not seem to have significant impact on demand for Telecommunications services for the first period of liberalization.