For developing countries, the challenge of restructuring is particularly acute because these countries are being forced by global conditions to accelerate both basic infrastructure construction and sweeping market reforms that will attract more advanced development efforts. Developed countries have had the luxury of being able to address these complicated, sometimes conflicting, activities separately, over an extended period of time.
It should be clear that no restructuring plan can possibly satisfy the demands of all relevant constituents or address the many difficulties involved in the process of expanding and improving a national telecommunications market. Accordingly, the challenge is to establish priorities and to make rational, concerted efforts to pursue specified objectives. Over time, the scope of the government's objectives can be broadened. Inaction because of a desire to accomplish everything at once is perhaps as counter productive as rapid implementation of a poorly conceived restructuring plan.
Another danger to be avoided is pursuing a restructuring plan that claims to be all things to all people. Ultimately, disappointment and disenchantment are likely to overwhelm whatever success the plan may experience. Investors are especially skeptical of reforms that purport to be all-encompassing or complete. Because new investment is so vital to the future of telecoms development, this aspect of an ill-defined restructuring plan could prove fatal.