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Øystein D. Fjeldstad is Telenor Chair of International Strategy and Management at the Norwegian School of Management BI.

Manuel Becerra is Professor of Strategy and International Management at the Instituto de Empresa.

Sathya Naryanan is a partner with Aster Global Consulting.



[1] Though Norway is not part of the European Union, it belongs to the European Economic Area and the regulatory and technical environment of its telecom industry is very similar to that of the EU countries.

[2] The second coder, who was less knowledgeable about the industry, did not account for three moves. In one competitive move, Omnitel refused to sign a previously negotiated agreement with the Italian Ministry of Communications; the second coder considered this news release as a decision not to take a competitive move, although it actually reflects the action to take the matter to the EC competition commissioner (coded finally as a regulatory action). The second move related to a joint venture between Swedish Telia and Telecom Finland in Estonia; the second coder considered the news as a statement of intentions rather than the establishment of a physical network, as it actually occurred (two infrastructure cooperative actions). Finally, the second coder discarded the decision to bid for the third Italian mobile license which grouped France Telecom, German DT, and the Italian electricity firm Enel; the wording of the article seemed to reflect an intended plan rather than the actual action of bidding for the license, which did actually occur in the days following the news release (two infrastructure cooperative actions).

[3] Of the 199 actions, 23 could not be classified with regard to their nature or their type (legal actions, reduction of firm size and capacity, and formal organizational restructuring). These specific actions did not involve cooperation with other firms, nor a direct attempt to increase their competitiveness through newly added infrastructure, greater promotional efforts, or layering of services. However, these actions were still accounted for in the statistical analysis and grouped under a common category. The results in the next section show the comparisons only among the categories of interest: cooperation vs. competition and infrastructure vs. promotion vs. service.