Tony Lavender is stepping back from his role as Managing Partner of Plum Consulting. After 44 years working in the telecommunications industry here in the UK and globally, the last 12 years as a partner at Plum Consulting, Tony is looking forward to more personal time with his family and on other projects. He will continue to support Plum and its clients as a senior advisor and will continue to be closely involved in all aspects of our work.

Tony started his career working for BT on the first wave of digital exchanges and has remained at the forefront of technology evolution in the telecoms industry throughout his career. He has worked in engineering, commercial, strategic, policy and regulatory roles and has supported initiatives like the UK Spectrum Policy Forum for several years. He will continue to make contributions to the policy debate, especially around radio spectrum.

Plum’s remaining partners, Tim Miller and Grant Forsyth, are pleased to announce that from 1 October 2023 they have been joined by two new partners, Benoît Felten and Chris Taylor.

Benoît specialises in the analysis of telecom strategies and the business implications of technological change. His focus is on the impact of business realities on tactical and strategic decisions but also policy and regulation. His advice has been used by vendors, operators and to lobby for changes to regulation, and by governments to form regulatory policy and strategy. He has built economic models for operators and vendors to assess the viability of technology change and infrastructure investment, the market conditions for profitability and the pacing of deployment and commercialisation. Benoît has lived and worked for two decades in Europe and close to a decade in Asia (based in Shanghai and Hong Kong). This has given him a deep understanding of the various success factors (and failures) of telecom initiatives in both developed and emerging markets.

Chris is a specialist in communications and media regulation who has held senior positions and led major programs of work in the public and private sectors. He has extensive experience in telecommunications market analysis, regulation and policy. Chris was formerly Director of Consumer Policy at Ofcom, the UK communications and media regulator. Here he led and enhanced the regulator’s capability to address demand side competition issues with a focus on real consumer experiences and outcomes. Before that he was Director of Regulatory Affairs for Cable & Wireless, leading a complex regulatory agenda managing both incumbent and challenger businesses across 33 diverse jurisdictions. Prior to joining Plum, Chris provided consulting advice on a range of issues, using his extensive knowledge and experience of regulation to deliver real value and benefit to his clients.

With this new partner group, Plum will continue to serve our clients with the expertise, insights and analysis which Plum has come to be known for. As the telecommunications and broadcasting industries change, our clients know that it is vital to keep abreast of developments in technology, regulation and policy. We have recently been working on projects with digital inclusion and social welfare becoming increasingly important; ongoing fibre adoption and policy decisions around the world; the interaction and coexistence of satellite and 6G; questions over revenue flows in telecommunications and Internet ecosystems; and spectrum policy due to be set at WRC-23 (and the agenda set for WRC-27). Plum will continue to strive to be on the cutting edge of ideas so that our clients can be as well.

Plum Consulting, with offices in London and Paris, is an independent consulting firm, focused on the telecommunications, media, technology, and adjacent sectors. We apply extensive industry knowledge, consulting experience, and rigorous analysis to address challenges and opportunities across regulatory, radio spectrum, economic, commercial, and technology domains to offers strategy, policy and regulatory advice on telecoms, spectrum, digital, online and audio-visual media issues.