Strategy

The expansion of fibre optics in Germany and neighbouring countries is currently experiencing a boom. Investors are looking for investment opportunities in future-proof and sustainable infrastructures. New providers are forming and established telecommunications companies are upgrading their networks to meet the demands of the future. WIK supports these players in many ways: We conduct market potential analyses to examine the attractiveness of expansion areas at the micro level. We analyse the regulatory environment and assess the implications of public funding programmes. We assess concrete business cases and check the sustainability and value of existing infrastructures. We forecast future market developments and analyse demand behaviour. For this purpose, we worth together with our clients and draw on our deep understanding of the retail business (consumer and enterprise) as well as wholesale business to generate valuable and sustainable propositions.

We have more than 40 years of experience in regulated markets. During this time, we have built up extensive expertise in regulatory economics and regulatory management. This includes our core markets of telecommunications and postal services as well as other network industries. Currently, the topics of regulation and competition policy are also becoming increasingly important in the platform economy. Based on our expertise, we are able to analyse direct and indirect effects and derive recommendations for action.

Benchmarks are an essential tool to assess the success of measures, products, strategies, processes or activities in contrast with others. Best practice examples can be identified in order to learn from them. Benchmarks play an important role both in policy and in advising companies and can be conducted within countries at a regional level as well as on a cross-country basis.  

We regularly conduct benchmarks for public and private clients. Our clients benefit from our experience from a large number of projects at home and abroad, a network of partners in many European member states and a number of non-European countries, as well as extensive internal datasets that are regularly updated.

The digital transformation is largely driven and controlled by market participants. In network-based industries, however, legal and regulatory frameworks are needed to guide the transformation in order to safeguard competition and innovation. We have contributed our expertise on network industries to support the strategy development of the federal government on many occasions as well as individual federal states.

Market forces are driving the construction of gigabit networks. However, the market cannot provide every address in Germany with a gigabit connection. To ensure that state subsidies only take effect where there are market failures, we have prepared a viability model to assess to what extent fibre should be deployed on a commercial basis. We use economic model calculations to show what the market can achieve and thus contribute to more transparency and better planning in the market.

In the course of due diligence reviews, we assess the transaction is d in detail. This includes aspects such as business model, strategy, market and competitive position, the quality of existing infrastructures, future viability and future strategy as well as the business plan and enterprise value. We have assessed FTTH expansion projects on many occasions in recent years. Our clients benefit in particular from our extensive expertise in understanding the conditions for network expansion in the context of market dynamics and the institutional framework.

The expansion of nationwide and high-performance network infrastructures in fixed and mobile networks is important from an economic and social perspective. Thus, the public sector may need to engage in supply-side and demand-side funding programmes in order to achieve nationwide coverage and prevent a digital divide.

We are involved in the area of broadband funding in many ways. We support the public sector in the economic design and implementation of new support programmes on the supply and demand side. As experts, we evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of existing programmes. In addition, we provide inputs to ongoing debates through benchmark and best practice analyses.