Application of DEA to investigate distinctive regional characteristics for Asia-Pacific Telco management

Abstract

In this paper, we present the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) application case study to investigate the regionally distinctive telco management characteristics of the Asia-Pacific countries. This study attempts to exploit the implications of DEA for the assessments of core process capabilities of telcos. Accordingly, we extract input variables of CAPEX (capital expenditure), operating expense, marketing expense, and number of employees, each to reflect the competitiveness of the core processes such as fixed asset utilization, operation & sales efficiency, and white collar productivity. In conjunction with the input variables, the output variables are chosen as EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization), ARPU (Average Revenue per User), and number of subscribers. The computational testing results, conducted with total 37 telcos of the 12 Asia-Pacific countries, are analyzed in various ways to understand the distinctive performance characteristics across the region. The managerial implication captured from this study provides useful insight for using DEA as the international telco management purpose.