Attendees should make travel plans to ensure they arrive for lunch on Monday afternoon to experience the Plenary Session Luncheon. In addition to the keynote presentation, you will also share lunch with colleagues, hear welcome remarks from IWCS, and experience awards recognizing the Outstanding Technical Paper, Best Presentation, and Outstanding Poster Paper from last year’s conference. The Plenary Luncheon is open to full-access attendees.
Please be advised the Plenary Session Luncheon takes place on Monday (day 1 of the event), which is a new schedule change that was well-received at last year’s event and will be maintained for the 2025 conference.
Keynote Speaker: Donal Hanrahan
Donal Hanrahan is the Chief Executive Officer for X3T in Dublin, Ireland. His role is to expand on the access and full utilization of fibre networks deployed in Ireland into new business models for the UK and International markets.
A member of the Granahan McCourt team which became the successful bidder for Ireland’s National Broadband Plan, the largest Public Private Partnership in European telecoms, Donal served as Chief Operating Officer, Deployment, at NBI, the company formed to deliver the ambitious Project.
Donal studied at Trinity College Dublin, receiving his BA in Civil Engineering, and studied Business at the University College Dublin, where he received his MBA.
“Connect Once. Connect to Many!”
This keynote presentation examines the critical role of wholesale broadband infrastructure in achieving universal connectivity, using Ireland’s National Broadband Ireland (NBI) case study as a successful model for public-private partnership that balances policy objectives with commercial viability.
By combining government strategic vision and funding with private sector efficiency and innovation, this approach delivers comprehensive digital infrastructure while ensuring fair commercial returns, demonstrating how public-private partnerships can achieve both social equity goals and sustainable business models
A central policy question emerges around societal priorities – concentrating populations in cities versus enabling rural communities through comprehensive connectivity. AI applications in agriculture, including for example crop assessments, demonstrate critical need for high-speed rural connectivity, positioning broadband as essential infrastructure rather than luxury.
Ireland’s coordinated approach demonstrates how government policy, strategic funding, and the right commercial partnerships achieve comprehensive fiber coverage, on time and in budget.
The presentation will also share insights from the UK where significant investment by new Alternative Networks (AltNets), encouraged in some cases by Government subsidy, has led to increasing fibre broadband availability. However, it has also resulted in increasing overbuild by the incumbent, who was initially slow to deploy fibre broadband infrastructure. For AltNets with low customer penetration, and increasing competition from the incumbent, the future looks challenging in their current form.
The presentation further explores how X3T serves as an enabler of wholesale broadband solutions across Ireland, the UK, and beyond, including X3T’s “Connect Once, Connect to Many” approach through the Fibre Café – it’s Integration-as-a-Service platform – enables ISPs and Managed Service Providers access via APIs multiple wholesale networks and service providers – essentially democratizing access to the wholesale networks and supporting innovation at the service level by enabling access to consumers and business at the network level.
The presentation will also highlight some of the innovations that X3T is driving at the network operator level, including the use of machine learning to reduce cost and improve efficiency.
