ABSTRACT
Over the last three decades, the telecommunications industry has experienced significant growth and change. The number of telecommunications companies has soared, and the market size has enormously increased in response to such factors as deregulation and liberalization in the telecommunications sector. Technological developments, in particular with mobile telephones, have greatly influenced the structural shift in the telecommunications industry. The desire of a large group of multinational customers to obtain fully integrated, end-to-end global telecommunications services from a single source has created the impetus for telecom firms to offer multiservice broadband and seamless worldwide telecommunications networks (Goldman et al., 2003). Telecommunications companies especially adopt cooperative approaches to network building, such as mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, legal partnerships, and strategic alliances (Jin, 2005). Corporate convergence both domestically and globally has been a norm in the telecommunications industry because telecommunications corporations seek synergy effects. With the growth of the Internet, the role of telecommunications corporations has been crucial, and this has also resulted in the rapid growth of telecommunications convergence.
