2011 Speakers

Since 2005 Dirk Poppen has been reporting to the board of E-Plus Mobilfunk on strategy and business development. Mr. Poppen also supports the Innovation & Ventures team of KPN International with headquarters in Brussels. Until 2004, Mr. Poppen spent three years as technical director at KPN Mobile in The Hague and was responsible for the coordination of i-mode within the KPN group. Before that, Dirk Poppen was already active in various management positions at E-Plus Mobilfunk. Periodically, Mr. Poppen also played a leading role in strategic projects within the KPN Group. These included the preparation and the carrying out of the German frequency auction in 2010 as well as the UMTS auction in 2000.

Stefan has been active within the Mobile Industry since the early 80's, and has vast experience with all 3GPP radio technologies. Throughout his career with Ericsson he has held a number of different positions ranging from R&D, Operations and also Sales.

Currently Stefan is responsible for the Mobile Broadband engagement practice for Ericsson's region covering Western and Central Europe (a region of 16 countries spanning from Ireland in the West to Hungary in the East) where he supports operators with discussions on Network Evolution and Managing Traffic Growth. Stefan has also been heavily involved in LTE activities in Germany over the past few years leading up to the first commercial launches earlier this year.

Morten Tolstrup is the Director of International Wireless Services for TE Connectivity. Prior to working for TE (formerly ADC & LGC) he spent 13 years in a number of different engineering positions with an operator in Denmark, mainly focusing on indoor RF planning, tunnels, Airports, Pico-cells, micro cells. Over the past 17 years Morten has presented more than 50 papers, workshops at conferences around the world.

Throughout her career Hanna Maurer Sibley has been an enthusiastic proponent and a pioneer of next generation mobile services and technology. "Evolving HSPA/LTE technology is the foundation for future broadband growth built on connectivity, convenience and cost-effectiveness of services and applications available to all and everywhere."

Her career has stretched from Sweden to North America, where her primary responsibility was for managing the global development and customization of Radio network products specifically for the US market. Furthermore, Hanna is very active and a well-known figure in the Ericsson User’s groups and operator communities.

Mrs. Sibley is a graduate from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) as Master of Science in Engineering, Engineering Physics.

Ladislav Mozny is Vice President Strategy of T-Mobile CZ, a leading telecommunication operator in the Czech Republic. Ladislav started  in T-Mobile in 1999 as a Pricing Manager. Later on he was responsible as Vice President for CRM and Marketing for Business Segment. Ladislav’s long term interest is Fix-Mobile substitution and -convergence.

Jakub Załuski-Kapusta is currently responsible for product management of Comarch OSS Suite. His responsibilities include the strategy planning and management of new product launches. He also defines the architecture of Comarch OSS products and solutions. His previous roles at Comarch include implementation analysis and project management. 

Jakub Załuski-Kapusta has a Master’s degree in Telecommunications from AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków. He has started his career at Comarch in 2003. Currently responsible for product management of Comarch OSS Suite. His responsibilities include the strategy planning and management of new product launches. He also defines the architecture of Comarch OSS products and solutions. He has been responsible for the product capabilities in projects for Vodafone Germany, E-Plus Germany. His previous roles at Comarch include implementation analysis and project management.

E-Mail: jakub.zaluski@comarch.com

Since 2001 Neil has developed and delivered training for the majority of the major 3G handset and chipset manufacturers through EMEA, Asia-Pac and North America. Currently his training and consulting efforts are focussed on 3 key topic areas:

3G protocol stack (WCDMA, HSDPA,HSUPA)
Mobile Network Service Provision (Mobile Data Solutions, End-to-end Service Provision, Network Optimisation)
Government Research (Current and Emerging Wireless Systems)

Previously, Neil has worked as a Technical Instructor for Wray Castle Ltd., developing and delivering UMTS technical training material, and prior to this he spent 13 years with GCHQ on various Research and Development projects in both engineering roles and as a technical team leader.

Pal is a co-founding senior partner at Rewheel. He has gained over 12 years of experience from both the technology and the commercial sides of the industry. He has previously worked for Ericsson Research and Vodafone Hungary, where he was in charge of company wide management of the technical and commercial mobile broadband launch. Prior to founding Rewheel, he was principal consultant at a Finnish telecom consulting firm.

Tito has 15 years of communications industry experience. Prior to joining VPIsystems, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Lemur Networks, an OSS company in the CATV market. Before joining Lemur Networks, Tito was Chief Financial Officer of Aplion Networks in Edison, NJ, a software and hardware vendor of converged data, voice and video services. He was also a founder and the Director of Business Strategy for Coreon, a start-up in the OSS space for communications carriers. Previously, he held multiple positions in AT&T Corporate Development and Finance in the U.S. and in Asia, where he performed financial planning and analysis, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate development. He holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from SUNY and a Master of Business Administration from Syracuse University.

Glyn is responsible for the development of new product categories, solutions and partnerships across Deutsche Telekom's International Business Unit.  His department focuses on a number of business clusters including Alternative Access Services, Content Enablement and Unified Communications and has rapidly delivered Innovative new solutions to the market, including the recent launch of WiFi Mobilize; a global, seamless WiFi service for Carriers. 

Glyn has worked at Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile for the last seven years as a senior manager and leader in mobile wholesale and partnerships.  His career experience spans nearly 20 years in Sales, Marketing and Business development with spells at IBM, AOL and smaller systems integrators and software companies.   He is a keen sportsman and in 1999/2000, took a career break to crew in 10 month Around-the-World Yacht Race.  Glyn has a BSC in Management from the University of Warwick (UK).   He lives in the UK but works in Deutsche Telekom's head office in Bonn, Germany.

Johan Langer has been working for 20 years in the Wireless Industry. Currently, Johan is engaged with Businesses development of Wireless Data Services as a part of the Ericsson Mobile Broadband program.

Philip Macridis is Chief Operating Officer and runs the Mobile Division at Telenet, part of Liberty Global International portfolio of European Cable operators.  Philip has drawn on 24 years of Telecom, Media and Retail experience to establish Telenet Mobile in the Belgian market. His goal is to turn Mobile into Telenet’s main revenue growth engine and to become one of the first Cable Operators to successfully provide converged Fixed and Mobile broadband services to consumers. Achievements have included spearheading the creation of Telenet’s Mobile Division, establishing new strategic direction and acquiring a retail chain to secure distribution. Most notably for a new entrant in a market of 6m consumers, Mobile revenue has grown from €18m in 2009, €65m in 2010, and is on track to reach €100m in 2011 delivering  40% of revenue growth at Telenet. This market success has recently helped Philip secure the iPhone for Telenet, ahead of incumbents Belgacom and KPN. Prior to that, Philip held roles of Managing Director at Carphone Warehouse and BestBuy Europe, the leading European retailers of Mobile devices and wireless solutions. At Carphone Warehouse Philip lead all Mobile MVNO networks and participated in the UK and Virgin Mobile France executive boards. Previous responsibilities included several business development and sales Director positions at BSkyB, Europe’s leading satellite PayTV operator, senior roles at Inmarsat as well as founding a satellite technology company in partnership with the European Space Agency and other leading firms. Philip holds a Masters in Satellite Communications, a BS in Electronics and Communications and several international patents

Research Director Emma Mohr-McClune is responsible for the content and development of the Consumer Services Europe research unit at Current Analysis. Her specialist areas of coverage include mobile data, converged content and media services.

Emma has been active in the industry for over fifteen years, both as an analyst, consultant, IT tech journalist and freelance researcher. She received her MA (Honors) from St. Andrews University, Scotland in 1990, and then moved to the Czech Republic to track the evolution of telecommunications liberalisation in a post-Soviet economy.

Emma has been quoted in articles and columns published in national and trade magazines, such as The Times, The Herald Tribune, The Economist, The Independent, The Financial Times and Total Telecom. Emma has a passion for scuba diving and the protection of marine life. She is based in Germany.

With over 16 years of experience in the communications industry, Mr. McFarland currently leads product management and marketing for Airvana’s Femtocell Business, including their CDMA & LTE Femtocells, Femtocell Management Server, and Universal Access Gateway.  Previously, Mr. McFarland was a Sr. Product Line Manager at Cisco Systems, where he was responsible for the strategy, product planning and marketing of Cisco's $1+ billion Carrier Ethernet product line.  Also at Cisco, he was a Software Product Line Manager for a $2 billion data networking product line designed for the small business and enterprise market.  Prior to Cisco, he was Founder and VP of Product Management and Business Development for SetWave, and has held strategy and technology consulting roles at Mercer Management Consulting, the Corporate Development and Strategy Group of Ameritech Corporation, and Accenture.  Mr. McFarland holds an MBA from the J. L. Kellogg School of Management and a BSME from Northwestern University, and graduated first in his class from both schools.  He and his family reside in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Antonios is Rewheel's co-founder and managing partner. For the last 12 years he led mobile industry projects in the areas of strategy, business case appraisals and vendor selections. He has previously worked for Nokia Networks, a Vodafone joint venture in Sweden and two Scandinavian telecom management consulting firms: Northstream and Omnitele. Prior to founding Rewheel Antonios headed the business consulting unit of Omnitele.

Currently employed as a pricing specialist for Omantel Consumer Business Unit and is responsible for all pricing of all consumer package and services. Major achievement include revision of packages and pricing for Broadband ADSL, revision of pricing for Mobile Broadband prepaid and postpaid plans, introduction of SMS plans in Oman market and handset/data bundling.

Marcin Ney obtained his MSc degree in Telecommunications from Warsaw University of Technology in 1998.

He has taken various positions in Centertel (Orange Poland) technical division from 1996 until now, where his responsibility covered radio network planning and optimisation, new technologies, systems, platforms and services introduction, project management, spectrum license bidding (GSM, UMTS, WiMAX, CDMA, LTE), network dimensioning, business planning, technical and spectrum strategy development, end-to-end network quality and others.

He is now responsible for the technical division of Orange Poland.
He co-authored the book „UNDERSTANDING UMTS RADIO NETWORK MODELLING, PLANNING AND AUTOMATED OPTIMISATION: Theory and Practice”, JOHN WILEY & SONS, LTD.

Peter Thalmeir holds an engineering degree in electrical and electronical engineering from FH Kempten. He specialized on RF during his degree and finalized his final year’s project in Radiometry.
 
Having worked with equipment manufacturers in product management and sales, Peter Thalmeir gained professional insight into the In-Building coverage issue with all its aspects.
 
Today, Peter Thalmeir with over 15 years of experience in the industry is Director, Training and Certification (T&C)  with iBwave, the leading provider of In-Building Design Software.

Dirk joined T-Mobile in 2005 and has been extensively involved in terminal penetration / traffic demand / spectrum demand / network capacity and network cost modelling activities. Network Economics is a department acting as interface between Technology, Finance and Strategy and provides economical evaluations for major investment projects across the group. One of Dirks main interests is to better understand the “Smartphone challenge” and how this “translates” into additionally required network capacity. He is currently developing a predictive model to forecast the future Load in the 3G Radio Access Network, based on which the necessary capacity upgrades are scheduled and the required investments can be calculated. Last year he was leading the project “Global spectrum strategy”, out of which some findings will be presented today. Dirk holds diploma degrees in civil engineering end economics from RWTH Aachen, Germany

Steve Wright is currently Head of Mobile Broadband Products & Propositions at Telefónica O2 UK

1989: Graduation from a technical school on electronics and tele-communications

1989 – 1999: Diploma and Ph.D. in Physics from the Technical University Vienna

1996 – 1999: Experimental Physicist at the European Nuclear Research Center (CERN)

2000 – 2001: Technical Expert for Location Based Services an WAP Gateway at max-Mobile Austria

2002 – 2004: System Engineer and IT System Architect at Hutchison 3G Austria

2005 – 2010: Head of IT Products and Service Enabling at Hutchison 3G Austria

2010: Head of Service and Quality Management at Hutchison 3G Austria

Christian Mueller-Gorman joined Iskander Business Partner in February 2009 after several years of project management experience within the telecommunications industry. During his career he gained over 12 years of experience in project and product management for global-acting European and North-American companies. He was published in several German newspapers (e.g. Handelsblatt) regarding his expertise on prioritized quality attributes for fixed & mobile Internet.

Working as a marketing expert for Mobile Internet, he gained a deep insight into the customer and marketing related aspects and implications of Mobile Broadband over the past years.

Johanna Dwyer joined is Senior Director of Radio Standards for Research in Motion Ltd.   With 18 years of industry experience, she is an expert in wireless handset radio architecture and implementations. 

Since joining RIM in 2000, she has worked in product development and advanced research, and has represented RIM in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Standards Definition Organization.  She assists in the development and management of Intellectual Property for RIM and in the development of prototype handsets for emerging technologies. 

Johanna studied Applied Mathematics and Engineering at Queen’s University and Wireless Systems Engineering and Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa.

Adrian Scrase played a central role in creation of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and is responsible for the operations of the 3GPP Project Co-ordination Group. He also Heads 3GPPs’ Mobile Competence Centre (MCC) which is an International team of 20 experts who provide comprehensive support to the Project.

Adrian has more than 25 years experience in the telecommunications field, which includes 20 years of experience in standardization. He is Vice President within ETSI with responsibility for International Partnership Projects.

Peter joined Magyar Telekom (NYSE: MTA; part of the Deutsche Telekom Group) in 2006. His first role was leading the Program Management and Development Department at the Internet Services division (T-Online). Since January 2008 he leads the CRM Development Center in the Technology Unit, where he is responsible for all CRM-related projects and systems, serving 5+ million fixed-line, mobile and broadband customers. In 2008 Peter led the IT team in Magyar Telekom's repositioning project that included the introduction of the T-Home brand in Hungary. Before joining Magyar Telekom, he worked as CIO for a retail chain in Hungary. Between 1997 and 2003 Peter worked for Capgemini as Service Delivery Director, Program Manager and Program Director in large scale Billing/CRM projects mainly in the telecom sector. Peter graduated from Budapest University of Technology and Economics as M.Sc.Eng Information Technology and holds an MBA degree