Modelling and forecasting mobile telecommunication services: the case of Greece

Abstract

In this article we try to model the adoption pattern of mobile telecommunication services into the Greek market for the period 1993 to 2005. Two separate sigmoid curves, the Gompertz and the Logistic, are fitted to the observed number of subscribers by means of nonlinear least squares. Our empirical results reached three conclusions. First, the introduction of the pre-paid mobile telephony in 1997 along with the entry of the third mobile operator in 1998 has boosted the diffusion process in Greece; second, the levelling-off process in the diffusion of mobile phones has already begun; third, the average expected growth rate in new subscribers is less than half percent for the period between 2006 and 2015.

Acknowledgement

Authors would like to thank Aris Papageorgiou for his useful comments.

Notes

¹Source of our data is OECD's Telecommunication Database.

²

³Velocity is approximated by the first difference in the number of subscribers, while acceleration by the second difference.