کشش تقاضای تلفن های همراه در خاورمیانه و شمال آفریقا

This study investigates the components of the mobile telephone demand in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) between 1995 and 2007. We find that the magnitude of demand elasticities do not entice collusive behavior between service providers because the effect of price reductions is neutral on total revenues. We also find that the cost of service and administrative corruption have a strong negative effect on mobile penetration, which, surprisingly, is higher in countries with more unequal income distribution. The study discusses how market reforms in developed countries fail to translate to developing countries because several negative externalities are often overlooked.

It is now well recognized today that the openness of the telecommunication sector contributes significantly to economic growth and social welfare. Despite efforts exerted throughout the past few years to liberalize the telecom markets, the range of competition varies considerably across MENA countries. For example, none of the countries in North Africa has yet reached the level of liberalization of Jordan and Bahrain. Comparatively, the markets in Lebanon, Libya and Iran are particularly crippled, and struggling with high service tariffs or entry barriers. With the exception of Qatar and the UAE, currently all the markets in the MENA region have two, three or even four mobile service providers. In Qatar, the concession granted to the current and only mobile service provider (Q-Tel) will expire in 2013, and this date will mark the end of all cellular monopolies in the main MENA countries. In terms of subscriber base, Egypt has the largest mobile subscriber base in the MENA region with considerable growth rates since 2004. This is followed by Saudi Arabia where the number of mobile subscribers has double digit growth rates but with a penetration rate around 53%, a figure below other Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries (Hasbani et al., 2009). The available economic studies on the telecom sector in MENA are based on older data that precede the recent penetration of the mobile sector (for example the significant study in this sector – by Rossotto et al., 2005 – is based on data for 1999) or focus on a specific country (for example Egypt, in the case of Galal, 1999). The recent performance of the telecom sector, and mobile services in particular, has not received the necessary attention it deserves, nor has the pace of market transition from monopoly to competition been investigated. This void occurs at a time when several MENA countries are currently evaluating various liberalization schemes of their mobile industry. Hence, there is a need to reassess the future market demand for airtime and sales revenues of this sector and relate these findings to the optimal market structure and the regulatory landscape that a government would select to obtain the maximum social welfare. This study is divided into 6 sections. Section 1 explains the problem and states the objectives. Section 2 reviews the literature on the mobile telephone service industry in various markets. Section 3 relates this literature to specific MENA countries by describing the state of their mobile telephone sector and its development. Section 4 describes the data set, the sources used, and the time period of the investigation. In Section 5, we estimate the price elasticities that are key to set the tariffs of the mobile service operators across various MENA countries. Section 6 concludes the paper and discusses the policy implications by relating the calls for greater competition with the need of a stronger regulating agency to oversee the reforms in the mobile telephone sector.

This study has evaluated the growth and trend in the mobile telephone sector in several MENA countries over 13 years, between 1995 and 2007. Our results, have demonstrated that the price elasticities across countries are unitary suggesting that price reductions in the mobile service have an ‘equal’ effect on the volume of traffic, and therefore produce no effect on the total revenue from mobile telephony. In addition, a 10% growth in the number of mobile subscribers results in a 6.9% growth in traffic minutes. In terms of the drivers of mobile penetration, we found a strong negative effect from the cost of service measured by the Affordability Index and high corruption. Surprisingly the penetration is higher in countries with more unequal income distribution, perhaps a reflection that mobile service is perceived as a luxury item in these countries. From a strategic perspective, our quantitative results help policymakers in MENA countries conclude that the demand elasticities do not necessarily entice collusive behavior between service providers because the effect of price reductions is neutral on total revenues. These results are expected to support more qualitative and comparative studies that have called for greater competition (liberalization) in the mobile telephone sector and steer a regulatory policy for increased government supervision.