Chief Executive Officers of telecoms operators and ICT equipment manufacturers will gather on October 3rd in Brussels at the Summit hosted by ETNO and the Financial Times. The CEO Summit will build upon the CEO Roundtable hosted by Commissioner Kroes on July 13th and will facilitate further input from industry on how to achieve the Digital Agenda targets.

"Starting from the industry recommendations presented at the CEO Roundtable closing meeting, the aim of the ETNO-FT Summit is to further stimulate the debate  amongst industry players on how policies can contribute to boosting private investment in high speed broadband networks and encourage new business models and services to emerge,"  says Luigi Gambardella, ETNO Executive Board Chairman.

"Data traffic is booming, meaning that business models should develop in such a way that the major infrastructure costs associated with the increase in data are covered. Infrastructure investments are driven by expectations of appropriate returns: if more bandwidth is needed, operators need to be able to monetise their investment in making such additional bandwidth available", added Gambardella.

The  ETNO-FT CEO Summit aims at fostering the dialogue between all actors in the Internet eco-system, from network and service providers to ICT equipment manufacturers and over the top players, to debate how the Internet's current commercial model needs to evolve and how new revenues can be generated to support the need for infrastructure investments.

The Summit will be opened by Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda.  To set the scene for the panel discussions, Professor Jonathan Liebenau from the London School of Economics will give a presentation on the future Internet models and trends. Chief Executive Officers of leading telecoms operators and ICT equipment manufacturers confirmed so far include:

César Alierta, Chairman and CEO, Telefónica; Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO, Telekom Austria; Jon Fredrik Baksaas, President and CEO, Telenor Group; Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion; Zeinal Bava, CEO, Portugal Telecom; Didier Bellens, CEO, Belgacom; Franco Bernabè, Chairman and CEO, Telecom Italia; Eelco Blok, CEO, KPN; Vittorio Colao, Group Chief Executive, Vodafone Group; Hakam Kanafani, CEO, Türk Telekom Group; Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chairman, Vivendi; Jo Lunder, CEO, Vimpelcom; Rajeev Suri, CEO, Nokia Siemens Networks; Ben Verwaayen, CEO, Alcatel-Lucent; Hans Vestberg, President and CEO, Ericsson.

To consult the full agenda and register, please visit: www.ftconferences.com/etno/

For more information, please contact: Thierry Dieu, ETNO Acting Director/ Communications Manager Tel: (32-2) 219 32 42 Fax:  (32-2) 219 64 12 E-mail: dieu@etno.be

ETNO’s 40 member companies from 35 European countries represent a significant part of total ICT activity in Europe. They account for an aggregate annual turnover of more than €250 billion and employ over one million people across Europe. ETNO companies are the main drivers of broadband and are committed to its continual growth in Europe.