‘Negotiating the Maze – State Aid & Next Generation Broadband’

Understanding and Debating the Issues – an INCA Seminar

The Programme is in four sections:
1) The European Dimension
The first session on the agenda focuses on the European dimension, Europe’s ambitions, the 2020 targets, the new draft State Aid Guidelines, CEF, different models for deployment and what we need to do in the UK and Europe to achieve the targets. The speakers contributing in this session include Hervé Dupuy, European Commission, Tony Shortall of Telage and Chris Holden of Corning and the FTTH Council Europe.
2) State Aid in the UK
The second section deals with practical experience from the UK in both urban and rural projects, plus some of the higher level issues about where we are going with the BDUK process. In this session we will hear from David Cullen, INCA Board and former CEO of NYnet, Raj Mack, Head of Digital Birmingham which has recently gained approval for their Ultrafast project and Dave Carter, Chair of INCA and Head of Manchester Digital Development Agency.
3) State Aid & the Private Sector
In the third session we will hear from two key private sector players – Mark Collins, of City Fibre Holdings and Nick James of UK Broadband giving their perspective on how private investment and state aid can best work together with FTTH and Wireless networks.
Also Felipe Florez Duncan from Oxera Consulting, who will speak about the economic aspects of state aid. Oxera produced the widely respected report ‘How A Co-investment Model Could Boost Investments in NGA Networks’, published by Vodafone.
4) State Aid Compliance & the New Draft Guidelines
The final session includes Duncan Gillespie of DLA Piper who will explain some of the key issues in project design, with Louise Lancaster, INCA’s Policy & Regulatory advisor, who has analysed the new draft State Aid guidelines from a UK, non-incumbent perspective.

Here’s the Full Agenda:

INCA State Aid Seminar Programme

And here’s the liveblog where I’ll be making notes and collecting Tweets by participants and others.

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