Telecom Italia: Italy's high tech old-style telecoms incumbent.

Abstract

The Telecoms Boom and Bust 1996 to 2002 has had a significant impact on the structure of the Telecommunications Industry. During the boom it seemed as if new entrant telecoms operators, entering on the back of new technologies, might even replace the incumbent operators such as Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom. But the bust has decisively reversed this tendency. The aim of this paper is to examine in detail some of the major recent changes that have taken place in Telecom Italia and the forces that have driven these changes.