2011 Speakers included:

When did you join the company?
IN 2008 OCTOBER
How long have you worked in this area?
14 YEARS
What other positions have you held in your organisation?
IR SPECIALIST, PUBLIC  RELATIONS MANAGER
What makes you qualified to speak on this subject?
I HAVE ALREADY WORKED WITH VODAFONE, 3 AND TNM MALAWI  AND MANAGED TO INCREASE THEIR REVENUES
Any other points you think may be of interest to the delegates:
I am busy with a book entitled: Definitive roaming strategies for emerging operators

Maria started at o2 10 years ago as Investor Relations Manager than moved to Business Development and Strategy, then she was building up the Partner/MVNO business at o2. Two years ago she took over responsibility for Roaming. 

Maria is responsible for Retail and Wholesale Roaming, and all relevant International Services. She is also coordinating retail roaming propositions across Telefónica Group in Europe.

Michael Brill (41) has more than 20 years of professional experience, of which 10 years at Vodafone in various B2B roles. Michael joined Vodafone Roaming Services two years ago and is accountable for roaming hub propositions.

Michael started his career as a management consultant in the media and telecommunications industry before he joined Vodafone’s newly founded Global Products & Services team in Düsseldorf, Germany. There, he led a fundamental review of Vodafone’s global enterprise strategy and programme managed its implementation in Newbury, UK. In the following years, he managed the rollout of Vodafone’s business segmentation and worked as marketing manager in the emerging mobile applications market.

Florian serves as head of support and GlobalRoamer operations at Keynote SIGOS since September 2007. He is responsible for the support of both SITE and GlobalRoamer customers as well as for the administration, operation and expansion of the GlobalRoamer test system.

Prior to that Florian worked as account and business development manager building up Keynote SIGOS’ international sales partner network in Asia, Middle East and Central and South America. In parallel he was engaged for several years as product manager for GlobalRoamer.

Prior to Keynote SIGOS Florian worked as an external business consultant for companies like Siemens and Colt Telecom. He has over 10 years experience in the telecommunication industry and holds a University degree in Political Science.

Guy Reiffer was appointed Vice President, Marketing for MACH in July 2010. In this role, he assumes full responsibility for the company’s global marketing strategy and programme, including product marketing and marketing communications of the company’s full portfolio of hub-based communication solutions. He reports directly to Rich Grohl, Chief Commercial Officer. Guy originally joined MACH as Product Marketing Director in early 2010.

A 20 year veteran of the telecommunications industry, Guy has worked for the last 10 years in convergence solutions, mainly at small start up innovators where he has headed up both Marketing and Product Marketing functions.  These roles have covered the areas of fixed to mobile convergence, presence & instant messaging, multimedia communication solutions for corporate, and the GSMA Rich Communications Suite.

Guy started out in the telecoms industry in 1989, first working for British Telecom in the UK and then moving to Nortel where he designed and deployed telecom networks in both Energis (UK) and Infostrada (Italy) as part of the deregulation of the telecoms market in the 1990s. During this time, Guy was instrumental in defining the first operator network to use only VoIP in BT Spain.

Commercial Roaming Manager at Telefónica Internacional SAU (TISA)

Telecommunications industry
September 2009 - Present (6 months)

• Negotiation and implementation of agreements on Internationa Roaming whosale rates for  Telefónica in Latin America


• Monitoring and control of the business at regional level to all of Latin America


• Business Strategy and Planning for International Roaming retail operations in Latam, considering marketing strategies for product, communication and advertising. Objectives: To improve key business indicators: penetration, ARPU and MOU

Senior Marketing Analyst for International Roaming at Telefonica Moviles Argentina
January 2006 - September 2009 (4 years)

• Development and implementation of promotions and product launch


• Responsible for the communication strategy of the area


• Responsible for budgeting and control of the key indicators

Jr. Controller Analyst at Telefonica Moviles Argentina
June 2004 - January 2006 (1 year 8 months)

International MBA at  Instituto de Empresa (Madrid) 2007 - 2008 through a scholarship from Fundación Carolina and Telefonica Group.

Erzsebet Fitori is currently Director, Regulatory Affairs at ECTA, the trade association representing over 100 competitive operators across Europe.

Prior to joining ECTA in February 2008 she was Head of Regulatory Affairs at Pannon GSM (Telenor Group) in Budapest.

Erzsebet's early career saw her as an Assistant Professor in the Department of European Law and Private International Law at the University of Miskolc in Hungary, following traineeships at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and at law firm Baker & McKenzie in Budapest.

Erzsebet holds an LL.M. in European Community Law from Leiden University and a Degree in Law from the University of Miskolc, Hungary. In addition to her native Hungarian she speaks excellent English and intermediate level German.

Torbjorn A Pettersson from Telenor has more that  15 years background in Telecom working together with Europolitan, Vodafone and Telenor Goup. He used to work as the senior technical roaming specialist for 4 years, focusing today on helping MNO’s and MVNO’s to improve growth, revenue and Global Roaming Quality for all services as the Technical Sales Manager and Product Manager for Telenor Global SIM box detection.

Torbjorn also represent GSM Association as the GRQ expert and advisor, with background from working with the GRQ framework for 2G, 3G and 4G. He has also a background and specialties working with  technical solution for roaming and interconnect services, Embedded mobile, GSM gateway & SIM box detection, STP, SCCP, SS7, Sigtran, service migration, Camel, SMS & MMS, SoR, M2M, MVNO, SP, Routing, GRX, IPX, Voice, IMS, RCS, VAS, GRQ, SLA & RSLA, Roaming Hub. He was also the chairman for GRQ Europe during the GSMA Open Connectivity project (SMS, Roaming hub and GRQ).

Torbjörn says:
- Did you know that SIM boxes is a global problem growing with more than 10% per year, and that QoS cost mobile operators millions per year? This can significant  be improved by taking the control over your in and outbound roaming traffic.

When did you join the company, how long have you worked in this area, what other positions have you held in your organisation?
Joined JDSU in 2008 as Product Manager for Wireless Services, RoamerNet and Active Performance Monitoring.

What does your role involve now, what makes you qualified to speak on this subject?
I have been the Product Manager for RoamerNet since 2008 and have successfully worked with operators around the world to subscribe to the service. Worked at T-Mobile USA for almost 13 years in product marketing, engineering and operations .  See attached CV.

Any other points you think may be of interest to the delegates, e.g.: have you written any books, articles, publications; have you been seconded anywhere: do you have an MA; are you a member, fellow or Chairman of any association; etc.

I have been working in the mobile roaming world for 10 years, having been involved in  building GO’s roaming portfolio , for  the different mobile roaming services, from postpaid roaming, to CAMEL based prepaid roaming, to GPRS roaming and 3G data roaming. Coming from a small independent operator, from one of the smallest countries in the world, Malta, I fully understand that building a bilateral roaming portfolio requires great efforts and a lot of time to Market. Moreover having closely followed all the steps of the EU regulation on roaming for GO in Malta, I am fully proficient of such regulation and the effect it  I am presently finalising my  Henley MBA dissertation entitled “Maltese Consumers’ Price Knowledge and Price Perceptions of Mobile Roaming Service within the European Union (EU), post EU roaming regulation”

I joined TDC in January 2006 and have worked with roaming since then. I have developed all the roaming products for our corporate customers – both voice and data. I have worked in telecoms since 1996, and have always worked with corporate customers.
 
The automatic safeguard against data roaming bill shocks that were launched in July 2010, have TDC in Denmark, Sweden and Norway extended so it has worldwide safeguard, and not just in the EU. 

I am responsible for TDC roaming portfolio on Voice and Data roaming, and have to make sure that our corporate customers have the right roaming products. I have worked professionally with roaming for 5 years now, and therefore have a wide knowledge on the topic.

Ikhtiar has more than 7 years of experience in the Telecom industry and possesses excellent understanding of roaming business from both technical and commercial viewpoint. He is now heading the roaming unit of Orascom Telecom Bangladesh Limited (known as Banglalink) which is the second largest operator in Bangladesh with more than 20 million customers. Banglalink is a wholly owned subsidiary of Orascom Telecom Holding SAE.

Since joining Banglalink, Ikhtiar has been involved in introducing several innovative services in Bangladesh market. Over the last five years, he has been instrumental in successfully building a global roaming coverage and drives an initiative to enhance customer experience. He also actively participated in various interest groups and contributed in developing various aspects of GSM Roaming through different forums.

Ikhtiar started his career in a research & management consulting firm handling customers from Telecom, Pharmaceutical, and FMCG industry. Other than Banglalink, Ikhtiar also worked in Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd. (Bangladesh’s only CDMA operator), and Warid Telecom. He has also worked in Product Development and VAS.

Ikhtiar holds an Executive Master of Business Administration degree from the American International University Bangladesh. He got his Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from Jahangirnagar University.

Edward van Kuijk (47) has more than 20 years experience in telecommunications starting with AT&T Telecommunications, developing GSM network components. The next employer was Philips, a large Dutch electronics company, where he had several management functions in the display unit, delivering display modules to mobile phone manufacturing companies.

In 2002 he joined Vodafone in The Netherlands at the time of Vodafone’s acquisition of Libertel, the second Dutch GSM operator. The first 2 years, he was responsible for product marketing with the task to upgrade the proposition portfolio to Vodafone standards. After that period he became the roaming manager responsible for both retail and wholesale, as well as for CDMA-GSM hubbing services.

Today he is heading Marketing and Sales of the Vodafone roaming hub, offering roaming services to all mobile operators.

Simon has overall responsibility for retail roaming at O2 UK. As a Product Development Manager, he previously launched O2 UK's GPRS, 3G and VHE roaming services. Prior to O2 Simon worked for BT Mobile in various project/programme management and business development roles.