Title of Workshop

Building the business case for profitable FTTx deployments – understanding the real drivers of profitability, what works and what doesn’t

Agenda breakdown for the four sessions (title and a few bullet points)

09:00 – 09:30 Registration

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

·         This session will cover an overview of key costs drivers e.g.:

o   fibre deployment cost - how can you look to reduce this?

o   average fibre length per home passed - how cutting 40% of a planned rollout can reduce fibre length by 66%?

o   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)

o   penetration rates – virgin territories may well be better than being second or third into a neighbourhood

o   mix of MDU’s and individual homes subscribing to the service

o   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 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 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 - 16:45 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.

o   How do you cope with high interconnection costs?

o   How bad network design can destroy your business case

o    

16:45 End

A few sentences on 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.

A few sentences on 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.