In this paper we study the Minimum Edge Addition Problem(MEAP) to decrease the diameter of a graph. MEAP can be used for improving the serviceability of telecommunication networks with a minimum investment. MEAP is an NP-hard optimization problem. We present two mathematical programming models : One is a multi-commodity flow formulation and the other is a path partition formulation. We propose a branch-and-price algorithm to solve the path partition formulation to the optimality. We develop a polynomial time column generation sub-routine conserving the mathematical structure of a sub problem for the path partition formulation. Computational experiments show that the path partition formulation is better than the multi-commodity flow formulation. The branch-and-price algorithm can find the optimal solutions for the immediate size graphs within reasonable time.