The arrival of UMTS raises a series of technical, economic, and administrative questions for license holding operators who must allocate investment monies to set up a network that meets broad coverage objectives with speed and flexibility. Several complex elements have to be taken into account, among them size of the equipment, the need for more sites when compared with GSM, and the growing costs and issues of equipment availability because of the limited capacity of network manufacturers to quickly respond to market demand.

This paper addresses these issues by offering a technological and systems science application, which, among other things, provides the basis for potentially dividing up investment costs among new players into the value chain.