Having debated intensely with our organising committee, we've now designed the programme and broad agenda for the March 27-29 Telco 2.0 Industry Brainstorm (see diagram below). The website will be up soon, and we're now approaching our short-list of top-class stimulus speakers.

If the aim of the October brainstorm was designed to test the hypotheses in our Telco 2.0™ Market Study and create a strong community of interest, the event on 27-29 March 2007 in London is designed to get the industry to consider end-user needs much more clearly and expand this community of interest to others who should be involved. We expect 250-300 leading lights from around the world to participate.

So, as you can see below, we'll be looking at strategic business model choices in a Digital world. As part of this we'll be debating if value is primarily in the network or on the edge; if 'QoS' as currently defined and defended is an irrelevance; and how to deliver value to/extract value from: 4 key en-user market sectors: Digital Youth, Digital Homes, Digital Towns, Digital Workers. We'll look at what services and NGN architecture is needed to support the above, with lots of case studies and some demos.

Why bother? The problem facing the industry was starkly articulated when, having heard stimulus presentations from most parts of the value chain - Investment banks, VCs, Incumbent Group Strategy Departments, Regional Mobile Operations, Regional Fixed Operations, ISPs, Media Companies, Internet Players, EU Regulators, Trade Associations - we asked participants in the Telco 2.0 plenary session to vote on their levels of confidence in the ability of operators to create long-term sustainable growth in an increasingly IP-based world. We got this reaction:

Telco 2.0 Industry Brainstorm, 27-29 March 2007 - Structure: