This edited book serves as a companion volume to the Seventh INFORMS Telecommunications Conference held in Boca Raton, Florida, March 7-10, 2004. The 18 papers in this book were carefully selected after a thorough re view process. The research presented within these articles focuses on the latest methodological developments in three key areas-pricing of telecommunica tions services, network design, and resource allocation-that are most relevant to current telecommunications planning. With the global deregulation of the telecommunications industry, effective pricing and revenue management, as well as an understanding of competi tive pressures are key factors that will improve revenue in telecommunica tions companies. Chapters 1-5 address these topics by focusing on pricing of telecommunications services. They present some novel ideas related to pricing (including auction-based pricing of network bandwidth) and modeling compe tition in the industry. The successful telecommunications companies of the future will likely be the ones that can minimize their costs while meeting customer expectations. In this context the optimal design/provisioning of telecommunication networks plays an important role. Chapters 6-12 address these topics by focusing on net work design for a wide range of technologies including SONET, SDH, WDM, and MPLS. They include the latest research developments related to the mod eling and solving of network design problems. Day-to-day management/control of telecommunications networks is depen dent upon the optimal allocation of resources. Chapters 13-18 provide insight ful solutions to several intriguing resource allocation problems."

Telecommunications Network Design And Management represents the state-of-the-art of applying operations research techniques and solutions across a broad spectrum of telecommunications problems and implementation issues.

-The first three chapters of the book deal with the design of wireless networks, including UMTS and Ad-Hoc networks.
-Chapters 4-6 deal with the optimal design of telecommunications networks. Techniques used for network design range from genetic algorithms to combinatorial optimization heuristics.
-Chapters 7-10 analyze traffic flow in telecommunications networks, focusing on optimizing traffic load distribution and the scheduling of switches under multi-media streams and heavy traffic.
-Chapters 11-14 deal with telecommunications network management, examining bandwidth provisioning, admission control, queue management, dynamic routing, and feedback regulation in order to ensure that the network performance is optimized.
-Chapters 15-16 deal with the construction of topologies and allocation of bandwidth to ensure quality-of-service.

This edited book serves as a companion volume to the Seventh INFORMS Telecommunications Conference held in Boca Raton, Florida, March 7-10, 2004. The 18 papers in this book were carefully selected after a thorough re view process. The research presented within these articles focuses on the latest methodological developments in three key areas-pricing of telecommunica tions services, network design, and resource allocation-that are most relevant to current telecommunications planning. With the global deregulation of the telecommunications industry, effective pricing and revenue management, as well as an understanding of competi tive pressures are key factors that will improve revenue in telecommunica tions companies. Chapters 1-5 address these topics by focusing on pricing of telecommunications services. They present some novel ideas related to pricing (including auction-based pricing of network bandwidth) and modeling compe tition in the industry. The successful telecommunications companies of the future will likely be the ones that can minimize their costs while meeting customer expectations. In this context the optimal design/provisioning of telecommunication networks plays an important role. Chapters 6-12 address these topics by focusing on net work design for a wide range of technologies including SONET, SDH, WDM, and MPLS. They include the latest research developments related to the mod eling and solving of network design problems. Day-to-day management/control of telecommunications networks is depen dent upon the optimal allocation of resources. Chapters 13-18 provide insight ful solutions to several intriguing resource allocation problems."

Telecommunications Network Design And Management represents the state-of-the-art of applying operations research techniques and solutions across a broad spectrum of telecommunications problems and implementation issues.

-The first three chapters of the book deal with the design of wireless networks, including UMTS and Ad-Hoc networks.
-Chapters 4-6 deal with the optimal design of telecommunications networks. Techniques used for network design range from genetic algorithms to combinatorial optimization heuristics.
-Chapters 7-10 analyze traffic flow in telecommunications networks, focusing on optimizing traffic load distribution and the scheduling of switches under multi-media streams and heavy traffic.
-Chapters 11-14 deal with telecommunications network management, examining bandwidth provisioning, admission control, queue management, dynamic routing, and feedback regulation in order to ensure that the network performance is optimized.
-Chapters 15-16 deal with the construction of topologies and allocation of bandwidth to ensure quality-of-service.

In the roaring 1990s, many companies seemed to claim great victories-acquiring another company, obtaining state-of-the art technology, or hiring a potential CEO savior-only to find that they had made a great mistake. The term "Winner's Curse" was coined by economists to explain an effect commonly observed in auctions. In such situations, since the winning bidder is usually the most optimistic about the value of the item being auctioned, there is a very good chance that the bid will be more (sometimes much more) than the item is worth. So a company that overvalues a good or service, or bids higher than its value has the potential of experiencing this Winner's Curse.
In this book, G. Anandalingam and Henry C. Lucas, Jr. expand the model of the Winner's Curse to explain how companies like Tyco, MCI-WorldCom and Bank One overpaid for acquisitions, and how shareholders suffered as a result. They elucidate the disasters that happened during the rush to acquire new technologies and illuminate the reasons that companies that were seemingly pioneers in the dot-com era fell by the wayside. Beginning by exploring the psychological, personal and market factors that can encourage a decision maker to overvalue an asset and experience the Winner's Curse, the book goes on to examine several case studies, including the disastrous wireless spectrum auctions that have devastated the telecommunications industry, and the dot-com bust. It concludes by discussing ways to avoid the Winner's Curse, calling for major changes in the behavior of CEOs and members of boars of directors, as well as the use of powerful techniques for analyzing decisions, including a systems approach to decision making, scenario analysis and game theory.