ance), capacity, billing, security, QoS, technologies. Development of the staff. Financial goals. The business plan always contains a business concept, for example: 'The business concept is to offer telecommunication services and systems which facil- itate personal contact between individuals and enables companies to develop and operate more efficiently.' 'Services and systems offered should be easy to use, competitively priced and reli- able. The network is the nucleus of the operations and infrastructure must support the network services'. Let us start with a simplified profitability model. See Figure 4.30. The main elements of this particular model are a telecom network as a service factory, the staff extending, operating and maintaining the factory, the marketing expenses for supporting the service sales on the market, the market battle field and finally the resulting monetary streams and the related financial calculations. Operating expenditure is often called OPEX. Investment expenditure is often called CAPEX (capital expenditure). A common action plan by the actor when choosing business concept may look like this: Examine the market and the competitive situation carefully and choose suitable role(s) in the value chain. The future market share should be sufficient to achieve economy of scale. Choose customer segments within the existing regulation framework. The customer seg- ments are normally end users, but there are also internal vendor-customer relationships between actors within network operation and service provision. Understanding Changing Telecommunications - Building a Successful Telecom Business Balance sheet and profit and loss account Financial calculations Revenues and expenses Operating expenses Investment expenses Bought services Revenue interconnect Services Tariff Accounting Accounting of given services, Marketing expenses incl interconnect End user segments Market demands Market battle field Other operators and service providers Figure 4.30 A simplified profitability model Based on your ro