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Introduction
Over the last two decades, there has been an awesome change in the world economy because of a constant development and up gradation in information and communication technologies. In particular, the telecom sector has triggered a revolution in shaping up the process of global changes to capture the opportunities. Furthermore, the growth of the telecommunication industry has allowed a huge increase in the amount of cross-border information flows, reducing transaction costs and stimulating consumer demand for world-class products, services, and brands ([19] Leff, 1984).
Mobile telecommunication sector in India is facing a fierce competition accompanied with entry of new operating companies. In this context, a relevant yet neglected issue is to benchmark the service providers. Service sectors have recognized the value of monitoring customer's quality perceptions. An understanding of relationship between customer satisfaction, loyalty and the operator's performance may give a new dimension towards management of this sector. Because of the global competition, the various service providers have to improve their services to maintain their profits. Traditionally, focusing on the best practice or benchmarking is the popular choice. The question is how we benchmark the best practice.
Investment in communications does not imply the increase size of overall communication infrastructure. In countries like Japan and Italy, investments in mobile communication networks, boosted by the rapid market growth, are partially substituting for investments in the fixed network ([25] OECD, 1999). Therefore, benchmarking the performance of telecommunications industry by means of variables such as the main lines in operation ([22] Madden and Savage, 1999; [18] Koski and Majumdar, 2000) could be misleading.
When there is a tendency for others to outperform an organization, [4] Brown (1997) suggested comparing the service quality performances should be compared to a set of norms. [16] Jensen and Markland (1996) suggested using quality control charts to monitor every day's service quality provided by the organization. However, such analysis could be rigorous in terms of time and money. The purpose of this paper is to make use of data envelopment analysis (DEA), a non-parametric approach that allows for the relative comparison of comparable decision-making units - DMUs ([34] Sexton, 1986).
The present study considers the possibility of benchmarking the service quality in the context of Indian mobile telephone sector. Moreover, it also...