Our Projects

High Level View

Future Foresight takes confidentiality seriously. The descriptions below are necessarily obtuse to protect our clients and to guard our own legal liabilities. Where we give details, it's for a project that is in the public domain. This is far from an exhaustive list of our work since 2000.

Neotel winning license bid

We modelled, pitched and won the regulatory process for the 19% empowerment stake in SA's SNO (Second Network Operator), along with KREM Capital. We helped find an SEP, and raise the R2bn funding, then the largest BBBEE deal in SA's history. The business was sold in 2016 to Liquid Telecoms for R6.5bn

MTN Iran bid

In 2005, we led this (very unusual and unique) modelling work, in-country partnerships, presenting to the MTN board, and spending a great deal of time in country (then as foreign visitors #26 & 27). Of note is that two Future Foresight team members were entrusted to carry the final bid doc, with the $27bn bid envelope, into country; selling this information to other bidders would have allowed us to retire very rich, yet MTN Board knew we were the people who could be trusted. On our side, the risk of kidnap was extreme, yet we took up the challenge. Today this is MTN's largest network.

MTN Regional Expansion

We worked with MTN on completing multiple cellular operations bids across their target region, during the final days of GSM licenses. While we did not win every one (some were deliberate market awareness bids), we won the ones that mattered most and that have yielded significant value for their management and shareholders.

MTN Acquisition Valuations

When MTN acquired Investcom, they took over 17 networks in the Middle East. We performed valuations on all these markets, always covering all operators in each market. Our strategic guidance covered some very eclectic operations such as Sudan (conflict zone), Iraq (highly divided), Cyprus (95% roaming traffic), and all the ___stan countries you can think of. It was an intense and exciting time.

Cell-C operational model

Siemens Mobile used our model to understand Cell-C in order to size and sell 3G networks to them. At Cell-C's behest, Siemens bought and gave our model to Cell-C for internal use. This remained in place for several years before Delta was bought in by an incoming CEO. To this day we claim that Cell-C's fortunes would have differed remarkably if they had continued to pursue our MVNO hosting guidance.

Orange MVNO entry to SA

We spent a year helping Orange to design a very exciting market entry strategy for SA, as the first and only true MVNO. We worked for several months in Paris, where France Telecoms interrogated our model extensively. The project was halted when Cell-C changed CEO, and withdrew their agreement to host Orange.

Avoiding Hostile Takeover

The board of an MNO client engaged us to assist them with avoiding an unwanted suitor that threatened to acquire a majority share in their business. We aided the board to drive selected value creating levers that yielded a rapid change in the value of the business, and which resulted in the hostile takeover failing.

Telecel CDMA bids

We led 5 African CDBA bids for Miko Rwayitare, using our model's scenario abilities to simultaneously model 5 markets.

Botswana cable decision

We guided BTC on signing up to cable capacity by guiding on expected demand and pricing into the future, along with a comparison of available cable options.

Undersea Cable Company

We helped staff leadership of the SA operation, and worked with them crush SA internet pricing by 90% over 6 months.

Several Acquisition Valuations

Here our clients were local operators, looking at African network assets. We have a list of 10 such projects, where we were always the point source for detailed valuations. In 2019 we helped SA's largest consulting firm work both sides of SA's biggest telecoms prospect, where we carried all of the valuation and strategic insight work. Here no parties can be named, as that project will very likely be resurrected one day.

MTN Strategic Partnership

Our team guided the management team of MTN group through the process of evaluating the strategic import of a partial equity sale to a new partner in Cyprus. We helped them to understand the potential benefits to be realised from the incoming partner, to value the sale of the shares and to structure the partnership agreement to ensure that they realised the merger value.