In association with
Menu
Platinum Sponsors
Platinum Sponsor
Gold Sponsors
Gold Sponsor
Gold Sponsor
Platinum Sponsors
Platinum Sponsor
Gold Sponsors
Gold Sponsor
Gold Sponsor
Christoph is a member of the Group Executive Board and, in his role as CTO and CIO, has been head of the IT, Network & Infrastructure division since 1 February 2019. Aeschlimann studied computer science at the Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and holds an MBA from McGill University in Canada. With more than 20 years’ experience in the software, IT and consulting industry, Aeschlimann had a number of management roles prior to joining Swisscom, most recently as CEO of consultancy ERNI Group AG.
Martin Taylor is chief technical officer of Metaswitch Networks. He joined the company in 2004, and headed up product management prior to becoming CTO. Previous roles have included founding CTO at CopperCom, a pioneer in Voice over DSL, where he led the ATM Forum standards initiative in Loop Emulation; VP of Network Architecture at Madge Networks, where he led the company’s successful strategy in Token Ring switching; and business general manager at GEC-Marconi, where he introduced key innovations in Passive Optical Networking. Martin has a degree in Engineering from the University of Cambridge. In January 2014, Martin was recognized by Light Reading as one of the top five industry “movers and shakers” in Network Functions Virtualization.
Juan Carlos is SVP Technology and Ecosystem at Telefonica global CTIO unit, leading technical projects like edge computing, private networks or network slicing. He is in charge of Telefonica’s participation in standardization bodies and industry fora (O-RAN, ETSI, 3GPP, etc). He represents Telefonica at the GSMA Technology Group and is chairman of the GSMA Telco Edge Cloud taskforce. He has taken other VP positions at Telefonica GCTIO unit over the years: Technology and Architecture (2017-19), Radio Access (2016-17), Transport Optimization (2015-16), Operations and Plans (2010-11), Transport, Architecture and Plans (2008-9), Fixed Access (2006-7). He has worked in different Telefonica companies along his career: VP Engineering Access & Transport Telefónica Germany (2011-14), director Technical & Business Development Telefonica Data Europe (Italy 2000-2, Germany 2003-5), Manager Operations & Resources Telefonica Latam (1998-2000), Senior R&D Engineer Telefonica R&D (1990-97). During 1997 he worked at BellCore Labs (NJ, USA) in TINA-C, an international research project. He has a Telecom Engineering degree from the Politechnical University of Madrid and worked as associate professor of Computer Science at Carlos III University in Madrid, from 1990 till 1997.
Alex was appointed as VEON’s Group Chief Strategy Officer and a member of Group Executive Committee in February 2019. Alex brings considerable experience in telecoms and infrastructure after more than 20 years in investment banking in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. Key industry surveys consistently ranked him as a leading telecoms analyst in Russia and EMEA. Prior to joining VEON, Alex was a Managing Director and Head of MENA Telecom, Transportation, Infrastructure and Healthcare Research at Renaissance Capital and previously he was a lead EMEA telecoms analyst at Citigroup. Alex holds dual British and Georgian citizenship. He was awarded an MBA from Tulane University in the USA and a PhD in Theoretical and Mathematic Physics from Tbilisi State University
As Chief Marketing and Chief Strategy Officer at Accedian, Richard is responsible for our strategic planning process and investment priorities, ensuring we create and develop a consistent brand communications and marketing strategy, and drives our commercialization efforts in the areas of global product pricing, solution marketing, and business development.
Richard began his career at Nortel Networks in 1992 as a test engineer for their public carrier switching division. From there, he segued into focusing on the wireless industry, taking on a variety of senior roles at Nortel within sales, operations, and supply chain during his 17 years at the company. After Nortel, he was vice president and general manager for BlackBerry’s North American business, and general manager of Viavi’s Visibility, Intelligence and Analytics (VIA) business unit.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering, RF specialization, from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Johannes Opitz is Vice President for Commercial Roaming and International Mobile Wholesale at Deutsche Telekom where he leads global negotiations and strategic partnerships with world’s leading Telecom Groups. His expertise includes telecommunications, IoT, roaming, strategic partnerships & operator alliances, strategy, product development & marketing,TV & Media, corporate finance & business planning. Johannes holds a PHD Degree in Accounting & Corporate Finance.
Dr. Terje Jensen is Senior Vice President at Telenor heading up both the Global Network Architect team and the 5G Readiness strategic program. The first role spans all network domains (RAN, transport, cloud platform, core) and setting directions for future technical solutions by defining targets, detailing guidelines, outlining solutions and executing pilots. This is a global team implying there are persons from all Telenor units and markets engaged. The 5G Readiness program addresses technical, commercial, strategic and business environment topics for all Telenor markets, which ensures that insights are readily available for main decisions and implementation. Collaboration with operators, vendors, industry fora and others are also part of the tasks across the different domains. Terje has more than 3 decades experience in the telecom area from a number of positions within areas like operations, planning, strategy and research. This includes engagements in several countries and international projects. He authored more than 200 publications.
Wim is responsible for the architecture, engineering, project delivery and operations of the core telco platforms and customer communication solutions of Proximus: mobile & fixed voice, mobile & fixed data, messaging & value added services, roaming platforms, IoT platforms, residential, professional and in-home connectivity solutions. Wim has 27 years of experience in the telecoms sector and has a solid track in people management, project delivery and change management. His previous responsibilities were in the areas of technical strategy, financial control, and project delivery. Wim holds a degree of civil engineering in electromechanics from the University of Gent (Belgium) and a postgraduate qualification in Industrial Management from the University of Liege (Belgium). Wim is married and has six children, is a certified sommelier-conseil and recently started his own small-scale vineyard.
Matteo holds the position of Director Strategy, Innovation and Partnerships for the newly created Network Business Unit at Proximus (www.proximus.com, previously Belgacom). He is responsible for strategy and investment plan, leads strategic partnerships, such as mobile sharing and Fiber partnerships, and steers technology developments in networks and platforms. In his current scope, Matteo has complete responsibility on mobile networks and services, including 5G and Spectrum. Matteo fosters collaborations with start-ups and scale-ups in value chain spaces which are strategically relevant to Proximus. His current focus is on digital technologies, advanced data analytics applied to network investments, AI/machine learning applied to Telco, 5G investment plan and use cases development, Software defined access (bonding), Edge computing, SD-Wan and Telco Cloud. Prior to his current role, Matteo covered several executive positions within Strategy, driving M&A files, partnerships and moves in growth markets. Matteo led Scarlet (www.scarlet.be) through post acquisition transition period driving commercial and operational synergies. Matteo led marketing and product management at BICS (www.bics.com), seeding and growing carrier mobile data business. Matteo started his career with hands on experience in software development, product development and program management. Matteo is Board Member of BICS, Proximus Luxembourg (Tango – Telindus), Tessares and is founding director of LoRa Alliance (IOT). In the past Matteo held several Board Positions in SME or startups, including Scarlet (AltNet Telco) and Tunz (Mobile Payment, Ingenico).Matteo has strong track record of strategic projects and complex negotiations. Matteo is inspirational leader, out of the box thinker, curious by inclination with strategic mind. Matteo is quick learner with unique combination of big picture and operational management, with notable problem-solving skills. Coupled with calculated risk capacity and growth mindset, Matteo is a real corporate entrepreneur, suitable for taking existing organizations to next level of growth. Matteo has developed vast network at CxO level and within Corporate Venturing community in Belgium, Europe and US (Silicon Valley). He has broad international exposure. Matteo has University Degree (Laurea) in Electronic Engineering with full marks from University of Pavia (Italy), a Master in Information Technology from Polytechnic of Milan with full marks and holds an Executive Master in Finance at Solvay – ULB – Brussels (A score). Matteo is fluent in English and Italian, business level of Dutch and elements of French. Matteo is married with 3 children. He has double Italian and Belgian nationality.
Luk is Vice President of Engineering of Telenet, the leading converged connected entertainment provider in Belgium spanning over 2 million fixed and nearly 3 million mobile customers and accounting for EUR 2.5 billion of annualized revenue. He, together with his team, is responsible of designing future-proof innovative solutions & networks for both the mobile and the fixed service. In his previous role as VP Mobile Technology and Roll Out, after the cable-mobile merger with Base, he was heading the integration and was responsible at Telenet for the mobile technology strategy, engineering and execution of the mobile network upgrade of the Base and Telenet network and realizing the M&A synergies. He brings a record of success and expertise in driving large technical transformation to keep the company on the forefront of innovation. Since 2020, he executes a scaled agile transformation in the network, cloud and infrastructure area.
With over 30 years’ experience working for suppliers of the large-scale network infrastructure employed by global telecommunications operators, Simon has driven many architectural evolutions and has been at the forefront of numerous, pioneering, technologies. In that time, he has led large teams of sales engineers and marketing professionals, assuming responsibilities ranging from designing complex networks to executing multi-layer inbound lead generation initiatives. A seasoned speaker and prolific author, Simon had written and presented extensively on emerging technologies, ranging from optical transport to network functions virtualization. With the advent of 5G, he is currently focused on software defined networking and the cloudification of the mobile data plane.
Kirsi Valtari is EVP of Elisa Automate business and CMO of Polystar. She has spent the majority of her career in the telecom industry, developing software-based businesses, telecom operations, and technologies. With a strong technology and operations background, Kirsi has succeeded with new businesses, launching go-to-markets and increasing value for Elisa’s customers. Today, Kirsi’s team is combining AI, network engineering and software to implement world class telco software for the mobile operator.
Christian is the Enterprise Technical Architect for critical connectivity in Air France KLM CIO Group. He is also co-founder in 2012 and member of AGURRE association (Association desGrands Utilisateurs de Réseau Radio d’Entreprise – association of large users of PMR). One of the goals of AGURRE is to lobby the government and regulators to obtain spectrum for verticals operational use. In parallel, the project started in 2020 to deploy the private LTE network, and Christian is working with Air France KLM business to prepare the future regarding the 5G upgrade and IOT tests. Some Proof of concept is in preparation in 2021.
Christian Regnier has worked for Air France since 1999 after working with a telecom provider and integrator. He is a graduate of the Grenoble School Engineers in electricity with a specialization in Signal Processing.
Martin holds a BSc in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Bristol and an MBA from City University in London. He was at Ovum for 17 years, where he built up the mobile practice, was director of research and established the Wireless Intelligence joint venture with the GSM Association. At CCS Insight, Martin leads the research on enterprise use of the Internet of things. He is also COO.
Enrico was appointed Chief Technology Officer of Sparkle (a subsidiary of Telecom Italia) in September 2019. From July 2018 he had been TIM CTO’s Product & Portfolio Manager and from September 2016 he led TIM Technology Innovation with a focus on 5G, network virtualization and slicing, big data analytics and cognitive computing. Prior to that, he held different management responsibilities in Telecom Italia in the areas of OSS, Service Platforms and Network engineering, including IP metro, CDN, wireline broadband access, home devices, VoIP/IMS, contact centre, video platforms and IoT services. He joined CSELT (Telecom Italia’s R&D center) in 1988 and led research and standardization activities on network management and service platforms in ETSI, ITU and the TeleManagement Forum. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Torino.
Luis is a telecommunications leader with over 22 years of experience building and leading international teams across Europe, Middle East and Asia. His expertise is in setting up new businesses, projects and teams in the Telco industry. He has a unique ability to balance business strategy and planning with technical understanding in mobile, fixed and IoT environments.
Fátima focuses on digital operations, and how the modernization of OSS/BSS systems will enable it and bring business agility and innovation to CSPs. She Works within the Telco Technology Office, collaborating with csps, network equipment providers, system integrators and independent software vendors to progress the digital transformation agenda in the industry. Before joining Red Hat, Fátima held several positions as account manager, business development and consultant in the telecommunications sector, with solid background and experience in operations transformation, OSS and customer experience solutions. Fátima holds a Master’s degree in Telecommunications from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Executive MBA in Business Administration in the IADE Business School & In Company Management Program by Instituto de Empresa Business School.
Patrik Rokyta is the VP of Systems Architecture at NetNumber, that delivers interGENerational signaling, security, routing and global data solutions to the telecommunication industry. Patrik has been with NetNumber since 2013. His focus is on the use of the cloud-native technologies in the public/private cloud, and in virtual infrastructure environments. Patrik has been instrumental in helping communication service providers build economic and effective telecommunication networks including the 5G core. In addition, Patrik and his team are responsible for architectural issues in the areas of telecommunication system security, delivery and deployment automation, OSS integration, network service management, and orchestration. Prior to joining NetNumber, Patrik was with Nokia Siemens as a Product Manager with a focus on customer projects and deployments in the LTE data, VoLTE, VoIP and Unified Communications space.Patrik holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany and is based in Munich, Germany.
Urs is responsible for UPC’s holistic digital transformation and as well as running the customer service division. Prior to this, Urs held other executive board position at UPC including strategy, sales and customer service. Before joining UPC, Urs was a Partner and Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and worked for 13 years in their Zurich, San Francisco and Johannesburg offices. He advised leading companies in the telecom, high tech, media and electricity sectors, and he co-founded and built up BCG South Africa.
Christian has broad experience in IT strategy, planning and procurement, auditing, M&A, IT consulting, international contracting. He has direct experience in account management, contract management, external consulting (mainly strategy and cost re-engineering projects), and has been involved in a range of global projects and international contracting.
John Strand has a background in sales and marketing in IT and publishing and has been consulting on strategies, sales and marketing since 1989, ending in the early 1990’s as a partner at a consultancy company. In 1995 John founded Strand Consult solely focused on the telecom sector, analysing markets and market trends, publishing reports and holding executive workshops that have helped mobile operators, mobile services providers, etc. all over the world focus on their business strategies and maximizing the return on their investments. John is one of the best-known consultants in the business. Anyone who has met John knows that he always speaks his opinion. Being honest – and giving his honest opinion on current issues in the telecom industry has become John’s trademark – even when it means being controversial or treading on a toe or two.
Luk is Vice President of Engineering of Telenet, the leading converged connected entertainment provider in Belgium spanning over 2 million fixed and nearly 3 million mobile customers and accounting for EUR 2.5 billion of annualized revenue. He, together with his team, is responsible of designing future-proof innovative solutions & networks for both the mobile and the fixed service. In his previous role as VP Mobile Technology and Roll Out, after the cable-mobile merger with Base, he was heading the integration and was responsible at Telenet for the mobile technology strategy, engineering and execution of the mobile network upgrade of the Base and Telenet network and realizing the M&A synergies. He brings a record of success and expertise in driving large technical transformation to keep the company on the forefront of innovation. Since 2020, he executes a scaled agile transformation in the network, cloud and infrastructure area.
Urs is responsible for UPC’s holistic digital transformation and as well as running the customer service division. Prior to this, Urs held other executive board position at UPC including strategy, sales and customer service. Before joining UPC, Urs was a Partner and Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and worked for 13 years in their Zurich, San Francisco and Johannesburg offices. He advised leading companies in the telecom, high tech, media and electricity sectors, and he co-founded and built up BCG South Africa.
Luk is Vice President of Engineering of Telenet, the leading converged connected entertainment provider in Belgium spanning over 2 million fixed and nearly 3 million mobile customers and accounting for EUR 2.5 billion of annualized revenue. He, together with his team, is responsible of designing future-proof innovative solutions & networks for both the mobile and the fixed service. In his previous role as VP Mobile Technology and Roll Out, after the cable-mobile merger with Base, he was heading the integration and was responsible at Telenet for the mobile technology strategy, engineering and execution of the mobile network upgrade of the Base and Telenet network and realizing the M&A synergies. He brings a record of success and expertise in driving large technical transformation to keep the company on the forefront of innovation. Since 2020, he executes a scaled agile transformation in the network, cloud and infrastructure area.
Media Partner
© 2020 All Rights Reserved