• Is the carrier industry at a crossroads?
• What are the fundamental challenges and questions to be addressed by carriers?
• What challenges are raised working in a mature market?
• Reining in aggressive pricing strategies in favour of more subtle competitive behaviour
• The financial challenges of dealing with the over-optimism of the past

• Markets with momentum - who is benefiting?
• The bigger picture - understanding the dynamics of the regional telecommunications landscape. 
• Barriers and blind spots - relationships, licenses and regulations. 
• Access - what are your options?

• The dangers of a carrier relying solely on their current portfolio to ensure growth and profitability
• Focus and refine: small carriers and the need to focus on core competencies and refine them
• Expand: how big companies need to look to diversification
• Creating a win/win situation: how flexible solutions help telcos of all sizes
  

• The enterprise mid-market – the next battle ground.
• Systems integrators: your friend or foe?
• What are the principles of success for delivering next-generation managed services?
• How do you get your sales teams to focus on solutions not products?
• How to take the hardest step: the first customer wins?

• Supporting the goals of the customers whilst still running a profitable business
• How to improve the customer experience
• Forming your network, systems and service offering based on customer requirements
• Harmonising UK and European IP networks to deliver seamless service to the customer

• Time to look forward - what's next?
• Ensuring customer focus - doing the right things and doing them right
• Product portfolio optimisation - the difference is not in the products but in the product mix
• Differentiation and segmentation in practice
• Business operations system - the enabler for a profitable business
  

• Delivering an integrated communications package
• Customer segmentation - seeking the differentiator that gives a business the edge over its competitors
• Understand the requirements of different customer segments - offering an adaptable billing and collection mechanism
• Creating a platform for improved profitability through customer analysis
  

• Now that the "perfect storm" is receding, are there new challenges facing operators?
• "New challenge" scenarios for carriers and how they are on the rise
•  Identifying how carriers must think differently and step through technological and operational considerations
  

• Are the demands of the customer ignored?
• How to harness existing and new technology to make services happen - turn the potential into reality
• Unleashing the convenience and ease of use from mobility and advanced voice, video and data services
• Understanding their demands and translating that into an effective business model
• The importance of meeting and exceeding service level agreements in retaining a satisfied client base
  

• How to prioritise the change agenda
•  Transforming the legacy networks
• Taking advantage of volume and scale to achieve a cost leadership position
• Should carriers be placing their bets on converged services and packet infrastructure?
• Migrating from existing systems to newer technologies with minimum risk and maximum return on investment
  T

• Shifting the emphasis from growth to gaining market share
• Delivering a flexible service and a range of commercial models
• Finding a niche to compete effectively
• How to differentiate yourself from your competitors
• Partnerships within country carriers in order to gain market entry, expand network reach and acquire customers.
  

• Finding partners who can provide quality termination and to exchange mutual traffic
• Partner swaps to reduce costs
• Leveraging existing assets as well as partnerships with other carriers
• Collaborating on product innovation projects
• Leverage of your technology base for a long term and profitable relationship with vendors

• The development of and recent changes in the IP transit market
• Additional criteria to the ISP transit purchase decision-making process
• Growth of broadband deployments and new applications used by consumers including peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, gaming applications
• Quality of service and reliability are fundamentally important in ISP selection
• The importance of the continuity of supply and long term market intentions of potential suppliers
  

• Developing an award winning IP VPN network and wholesale global data market
• Launching a ground-breaking IP VPN with quality of service interconnect service
• Overcoming the technical complexity of extending MPLS-based services across multiple international networks.
• Developing the customer proposition: global coverage with low investment, mapping of costs, customers independence
  

• The promise of the IP revolution
• The maturation of VoIP technology
• Broadband at the tipping point
• VoIP as the "killer app"
• Radical implications for the industry
  

• Broadband (DSL) - a major launch pad for service
  development?
• Developing new services and targeting new revenue sources
• Creating an easy to deploy network that is optimised for IP services to make broadband networks more cost effective
• Ensuring your service provides good value for money and in line with market rates
  

• User interfaces, provisioning and billing
• Current and planned deployments in Europe
• Technical implementation of the ring back tone service in fixed and mobile networks
• The service in practice – the experiences at Vodafone D2 in Germany and the Tele2 Group in Sweden
  

• The challenges of globalisation and new technology are driving businesses to be more efficient, innovative, productive and competitive - does broadband have a critical role to play in this?
• Developments in the home and office - fuelling the demand for bandwidth
• Is the ability to access rich content over the Internet threatening to create a social division?
• What are the emerging business models for the development of fibre to the home
• Demand for higher bandwidth applications (video games, music file sharing etc) - forcing operators to continue investing in network upgrades?
• Building a business case for broadband deployment in areas of low volume users
• Will 'second mile' technology strategies play a crucial role in lowering the cost of mass-market broadband deployment?
  

• The current speed of transposition
• Global overview of regulatory standards
• How are the regulators doing in keeping up with
  technological progress?
• Analysing present and future regulatory developments
  

• Development of global markets
• The new regulatory framework
• Status of the implementation in national law
  

• Working together to create incentives to bring change to life
• Ensuring prompt, effective and consistent implementation of new regulatory package
• Ensuring the spread of best practice
• Remedies in mobile, broadband and leased lines
  

• Transposing a regulatory framework into national law
• Regulating calls that originate on fixed networks and terminate on mobile networks
• Enhancing the benefits of competition for users
• Achieving transparency and harmonisation
• Encouraging and fostering a liberal competitive telecoms environment
  

• How closed markets are dealing with the advent of VoIP
• Incumbents' regulatory agenda
• Competitors' response
• EU and US approach to date
• Where do we go from here?
  

• Empowering regulators to deal with lack of full and fair competition
• Regulating to ensure the consumer interest
• Competition in the provision of broadband services
• Access and interconnection
• Universal service and users' rights
• Ensuring the interests of the consumer are at the heart of national and global policy making
  

• How are national governments and regional regulatory associations facing the challenge of creating an enabling environment for telecom carriers to achieve development objectives?

• Fibre, mobiles and satellite: the hybridisation trend
• The last mile: connecting enterprises globally via satellite
• Broadband, narrowband and everything in between
• Liberalisation and privatisation: the bottom line

• Empowering regulators to deal with lack of full and fair competition
• Regulating to ensure the consumer interest
• Competition in the provision of broadband services
• Access and interconnection
• Universal service and users’ rights
• Ensuring the interests of the consumer are at the heart of national and global policy making

• Are carriers failing to dominate this market
• How a converged market can play a critical part in generating revenues
• Strategies for meeting customers' needs and opportunities from VoIP
• Focusing business planning from traditional voice services and circuit-switched networks to the delivery of converged services over efficient networks
• What next?
  

• The benefits of converging multiple data and voice networks onto a single IP network
• Delivering a cost effective solution to help customers receive the quality of service necessary for voice and other network critical services in a converged environment
• Establishing a foundation for the delivery of future services – desktop video conferencing, video caller ID
• Why has VoIP yet to penetrate the incumbent carriers national or local networks in a significant way?
• Offering a value added service

• VoIP evolution strategies: slowly migrating versus a more radical full replacement strategy
• Leveraging the value of current technology investments
• Delivering on quality of service - prioritising time sensitive applications during busy periods
• Packetisation - optimising network connections by packeting voice and data traffic into smaller units
• Developing an open, standard network and overcoming interoperability challenges
  

• Bandwidth provisioning versus voice prioritisation
• Service differentiation and pricing models
• Are dedicated VoIP networks the solution?
• This is very complex, how can it be done at low cost?
• Cost and standardisation of gateways
• Compression, packet loss, echo cancellation, jitter and delay - what quality assurance can be achieved, what is acceptable to customers?
• VoDSL

• Myths and realities about VoIP in the carrier and wholesale business
• Voice over DSL (VoDSL) - the killer application?
• Overcoming technical challenges: toll quality, network infrastructure, sensitive voice traffic, latency
•  Is there a lack of applications that generate ROI?
• VoDSL - generate revenue, improve customer retention through bundled services
• Effects of deregulation and the increased competitive landscape
  

• Delivering significant cost savings and provide business continuity
• Offering VoIP connectivity and services to maintain market share
• Increasing ROI
• Strategies for meeting customers' needs and opportunities from VoIP
• Seamless billing integrations

• Regulation under the new regulatory regime
• UK and European approaches to regulation
• Impact of the Ofcom strategic review
• The future of regulation of VoIP

• Successfully penetrating new market opportunities
• Offering VoIP connectivity and services to maintain market share
• Generating additional revenue at the lowest possible cost
• Building new voice infrastructure at a pace that reflects revenue growth
• What standards should be embraced?
• Scalability and call processing capacity
• An evolution strategy to slowly migrate to an all IP future versus a more radical full replacement solution
  

What are the major revenue assurance issues facing carriers? What are the sources and levels of revenue loss? What are carriers' concerns for the future? It's not just about stemming the losses, but maximising addressable revenue from your carrier business - where does route optimisation and margin management fit in?

Politics
Agreeing on the overall philosophy and strategy. Protection of empires and egos - major barrier to success. Who will claim the credit for success (or the blame for previous mistakes)? Getting corporate
buy-in for revenue assurance. Business case - what
percentage of revenue can be recovered for what investment?

Identification
Where to start looking? Structured approach following an end-to-end process from event capture to invoicing. Developing the business case - what is a reasonable achievement? Best practice? Are there any quick wins? Focus on areas of largest return.

How much is being lost? Are you exploiting the full revenue opportunities? Are you maximising your margins? How do you know? What are the vital signs? High risk areas, mediation, processes, billing, fraud. High risk products (premium rate, IDD, high value customers, corporate accounts, inter-carrier settlements). What are the components involved in the overall revenue assurance process? What methodology should you adopt?

Implementation - case study from a European carrier
(guest speaker)
Real-life case study of how one European carrier implemented a revenue assurance strategy. What were the issues? What was their approach? What are the results? Lessons learnt. Future plans.

Implement best in class tools and techniques to capture vital information. Start at the beginning (event capture and opportunity choice), and follow through to invoicing. Are all the events being captured? Accurately? Are the options understood?
How do you know? Tariffing - how to tell if it's working, accurately, every time. Are you billing accurately? How do you know?

Setting KPIs
Sampling - measurement and test. Estimating revenue recovery rate versus investment. Benchmark against Industry standards. Set targets for revenue assurance reduction.

On-going management process
Provisioning. Network utilisation. Capacity planning. View and reports. Implementation of a revenue assurance division. Savings - how to quantify and measure savings and revenue recovery. Strategic marketing leverage of revenue assurance.Visualisation of revenue assurance.

• What will service providers do with their cash on hands?
• What can we expect from the capital expenditure front on a global basis?
• Are we done with free cash-flow improvements?

• How much cost is left that can be cut to improve operational expenditures?
• How next generation networks may decrease operational expenditures?
• Is this a good time to start a migration toward next generation networks?
• What role will emerging network technology play?
• How is MPLS changing the name of the game
• How much can you expect from the new generation of OSS support systems?

• What is the IP value chain?
• How broadband may reshape the telecom landscape
• Is voice coming back? Over broadband this time?
• What are multinational corporations and small medium size enterprises expecting from telecom service providers?
• What about municipalities and local authorities
• What are the opportunities of increasing revenue through a bundle of voice, video, and data services over a single IP platform?

• What are the negative aspects of this worldwide IP adoption?
• How is the IP value chain affecting traditional business models?
• How is broadband penetration shaking up the entire telecom industry worldwide?
• Is VoIP a sound value proposition?
• How fast can VoIP kill incumbents' voice cash cow?
• After IP, what's next? Is there anything in the pipeline?