Richard Jones
Richard Jones co-founded Ventura Team as a different kind of consultancy - employing only senior professionals with exceptional hands-on skills. He is currently focused on creating new fibre operations alongside Stefan Stanislawski.
Richard’s strengths are business/ commercial strategy and finding ways to create businesses against the odds. He has used this to help create new fibre ventures even under the toughest financial situations.
Extensive experience in ownership, developing strategies, business plans/models and commercial implementations for FTTH for companies across the globe - East to West from the US to Kazahkstan and from close to the Arctic Circle in the North down to South Africa.
He is passionate about fibre and has supported FTTH and worked to spread the areas where this can be deployed by working on government support (NBN’s), policy, financing options, acting as an ambassador for fibre deployments at conferences and government events.
He also invested in bootstrap our own operator in the Swedish market - ranked #4 globally for broadband service value, number 1 for open-access in Sweden and growing to 155,000 FTTH subs before sale to Telia.
Key Projects
- Directing the strategy to implementation and commercial planning for the World’s first incumbent operator to offer 1 Gbps FTTH to all customers (JT). Included a complete copper to fibre migration and rollout/implementation planning;
- Commercial and strategy consultant on European FTTH joint venture (SIRO) between an electricity utility and telecom operator (five years engagement overall);
- Led project team for start-up FTTH operation in Oman based around the wastewater network – creating what became the heart of the National Broadband Network – including strategy, business and market planning, business modelling etc. from the initial idea through to walking the streets checking the deployments (three years);
- Formerly Chief Commercial Officer of next generation start-up in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – having contributed from bid stage to design of all aspects of strategy and planning for the largest 4G deployment in the EMEA region alongside access fibre, xDSL and FTTH
- Directed development of commercial and technology strategy for electricity company joint venture with telecom operator for FTTH (Middle East). Including complete business modelling, costings, deployment methodologies etc. for 1.4 million homes passed.
Industry Roles
- Founding Chairman of the Smart Cities Committee for the FTTH Council – MENA (to 2017)
- Conference consultant and chairman – Fibre to the Home Council – MENA (2012 to 2017)
- Member of the Ultrabroadband 2020 advisory panel (UB2020)
- Originated the FTTH strategy workshop idea for the FTTH Councils in Europe and continued for many years as the one workshop became many and then a whole day event
- Ran Strategy and Finance events for FTTH Councils in MENA and Africa
- Regular conference chairman over last 15 years related to FTTH and NGA at key industry events such as Broadband World Forum, BBWF MENA, FTTH MENA, LTE MENA, LTE World
- Provides input on economic impacts of FTTTH with Gigabit Cities organisation (US)
His third book ‘Strategy Genius’ was published in 2015 for Hodder and Stoughton.
Richard has a degree in electronics, a masters equivalent in engineering, a MBA with distinction from the University of Warwick and is studying for a doctorate in the strategy of technology companies.