These days, the nature of services and the volume of demand in the telecommu nication industry is changing radically, with the replacement of analog transmis sion and traditional copper cables by digital technology and fiber optic transmis sion equipment. Moreover, we see an increasing competition among providers of telecommunication services, and the development of a broad range of new services for users, combining voice, data, graphics and video. Telecommunication network planning has thus become an important problem area for developing and applying optimization models. Telephone companies...