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TWST: Can we start with a quick overview of COLT Telecom (NasdaqNM: COLT), including your core markets and activities?

Mr. Doherty: From an overall strategic development point of view, COLT’s strategy today is exactly the same as it was when the company was first formed back in the early 1990s. The overall focus is business and governmental customers. Geographically we are focused on Europe but clearly with a global reach in the sense that we will work in partnership with other telecom operators outside of our own physical geographic location if that is what we need to do to meet a specific customer requirement. From an overall service and technology point of view we are focused on wire line services, high bandwidth services, IP-VPNs and so on, but are not involved in mobile for example. In terms of the underlying network infrastructure today, we have metropolitan area networks in 32 cities across Europe with a major high bandwidth long distance network we put in place that links all those together, supported by 11 Internet Solution Centres. So effectively what we have created from an infrastructure point of view is a pretty seamless end-to-end, indeed building-to-building network across Europe where we run, own and operate every single inch of the communications path for our customers. In terms of the evolution of COLT’s strategy, the simple way to think about is that our major infrastructure build is now essentially complete. There is an increased emphasis on marketing, sales and services. In other words, we have put the pipes in place and now the emphasis is on filling those pipes with profitable business.

TWST: Who are the target customers to fill those pipes?

Mr. Doherty: Today COLT has got over 14000 medium through to large size corporate customers for its bandwidth connectivity, its managed services and its professional services. So clearly the focus is obviously on continuing to win new customers and indeed selling either more of the same or expanding the range of products to sell into existing customers as well. To give some context to that, in terms of our corporate customers, the revenues are currently growing by over 30% a year to those customers. So against a background of a market that is certainly growing at much slower rate than it was a year or so ago, to be able to grow your corporate customer revenues by over 30% is a real demonstration of the success we are having in the market place today.

TWST: What do you see as your competitive advantages when you weigh COLT against the key players in this domain?

Mr. Doherty: From a basic infrastructure point of view, it is the end-to-end network capability across Europe; our growing product portfolio in terms of everything from basic to a much more sophisticated managed product range. But then there is the ability to deliver those services, to deliver that infrastructure in a way that really keeps the customer satisfied is very, very important. People often talk about what is value-added service or moving up the value chain and so on. I personally think the single most important value-added service that you can offer a customer is quality. It is the ability to have that circuit installed when the customer wants it, where the customer wants it, and obviously at reasonable price. Once it is installed, it is the ability to ensure it is kept up and running, cared for, and indeed if something does go wrong, because inevitably things do go wrong from time to time, then it is the ability to ensure that the customer is fully aware of what is going on and making sure the thing gets fixed in an absolute minimum level of time. You have to invest in equipment, systems and people to achieve that and that’s what COLT has done and that’s what our reputation has been built upon.