Agenda:
09:30 - 10:00 Registration
10:00 - 11:00 Session 1 – Understanding and Optimising the Opportunity - COSTS

• This session will cover an overview of key costs drivers e.g.:
• fibre deployment cost - how can you look to reduce this?
• average fibre length per home passed - how cutting 40% of a planned rollout can reduce fibre length by 66%?
• IP transit costs – how these are almost negligible in Western Europe but become limiting to profitability very quickly as you move further East (or into the Middle East/Africa)
• penetration rates – virgin territories may well be better than being second or third into a neighbourhood
• mix of MDU’s and individual homes subscribing to the service
• ARPU’s and number of subscribers. 

11:15 - 11:30 Morning Break
11:30 - 12:30 Session 2 – Understanding and Optimising the Opportunity - MARKET
This session will help you understand the impact of different questions on the business case:

• What is the state of competition and how will this impact performance?
• What do existing revenues tell you about what you can charge in the future?
• What is the state of mobile broadband and how will this affect the potential?

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch
14:00 - 15:15 Session 3 – Understanding and Optimising the Opportunity - REVENUES
This session will consider the reality of what you can charge for services based on a number of fundamentals such as:

• What is the ability to spend in the country (GDP per capita etc.)
• How much can you charge for FTTx products and how will this change over time?
• What products can you sell via fibre? 
• How will the current satellite penetration and regulation impact your sales of TV?

15:15 - 15:30 Afternoon Break
15:30 - 16:30 Session 4 – Optimising the Business for Real World Scenarios

• This session will look at how you get around some of the issues that may face the business case.  E.g.
• How do you cope with high interconnection costs?
• How bad network design can destroy your business case 

16:30 End

Workshop objectives
This workshop will be focussed on the detailed business drivers of an FTTx implementation.   How can you make money and how do you avoid losing – because mistakes in FTTx are very costly.
The workshop will include high levels of interaction and help people learn where they should be paying attention in developing realistic plans for FTTx businesses.  It will also reference the role of other technologies such as DSL, WiMAX etc when you are developing an FTTx business plan. 
No two deployments are identical. Local conditions, regulation, penetration, costs for digging, geography etc will all impact the business case and so the workshop will cover key drivers of profitability and also share the key aspects of building a realistic business model. 
It will include key aspects of business modelling combined with real world examples of costs, issues, best practices and potential traps for the unwary.

Who will benefit from the workshop
Anyone considering an FTTx deployment will benefit from the workshop as it will help their own assessment of the opportunity and help them avoid serious mistakes in terms of estimation of costs, potential revenues, penetration etc.
Commercial, strategy and finance personnel in current or proposed telecoms operators as well as utilities looking to diversify into telecoms will find this a valuable workshop in learning how to assess FTTx opportunities, exploit the good ones and avoid bad ones.

Workshop leader
Richard Jones was Head of Venturing with Analysys Consulting before forming Ventura Team LLP. Richard has led under-fire teams across four continents – managing or turning
around major telecoms programs.  He has developed strategy and business cases/models across FTTx, DSL and WiMAX technologies and has formed and/or invested in a number of NGN operators.

He is recognised as an expert on the development of telecommunications strategy and business cases and recently ran a workshop on business modelling for the FTTH Council of Europe – where he has been invited to speak for the last three years.
Richard is currently Chief Commercial Officer of Etihad Atheeb Telecommunication Consortium, a next generation network startup in Saudi Arabia.  He has contributed from bid stage to developing all aspects of strategy, business planning and modelling for the company which is now deploying fibre for residential and business subscribers alongside the largest WiMAX deployment in the EMEA regions.
Richard has also led/advised companies through to 75 fold returns on shareholder equity and writes books for Kogan Page on technology management including Project Management Survival which has been translated into Polish, Chinese and Latvian.  He has a BSc (hons) in electronics an MSc. Equivalent in engineering and an MBA with distinction.

About Ventura Team LLP
Our company has unique experience as we combine operational, advisory and investment experience.  We have long track records in advising telcos but also have held operational roles (e.g. Richard Jones is currently Chief Commercial Officer for a next generation operator that is developing in Saudi Arabia and has signed the largest WiMAX deal in EMEA as well as planning fibre deployments).  In addition, Ventura Team LLP is an investor in a number of telco startups including a fibre operator in the ultra-competitive Swedish market.
The result is that we believe we understand the real world issues and approach questions from a pragmatic and practical standpoint rather than from the theory.  When we talk about dig costs it’s because we’ve dug fibre.  When we talk about customer take up it’s because we’ve done it!