Gareth Davies
Director Competition Policy
OFCOM

"Convergence is the work of markets, but Ofcom has a role in influencing the speed at which it occurs and how widely the benefits are enjoyed. We believe that the interests of citizens and consumers are served by regulating for convergence. To this end, we have developed a strategic framework that will drive our work over the next three years".

Gareth Davies has been Director of Competition Policy at Ofcom since 2004, and is responsible for competition policy in a number of areas, including broadband, business markets and the BBC. Prior to joining Ofcom, he was a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, leading PwC's UK telecoms strategy consulting practice. Earlier in his career, he spent 7 years as a Government economist, mainly with the DTI.

Rakesh Mahajan
Director Of Mobility,
BT Global Services

"Increasingly customers, whether in the office or at home, are demanding better and simpler services. BT is leading the way in developing and delivering seamless converged solutions that enable people to work and play more productively, and more importantly, we're placing them in control!".

He joined BT in 2003 and moved to BT Global Services - the growth engine of BT- in 2005. Rakesh has been responsible for delivering leading-edge mobility driven solutions to some of the largest and most dynamic corporations in the world including Unilever, Philips and Credit Suisse.

In his day-to-day role, Rakesh is responsible for the marketing and strategy, and the product and service development that enables BT to deliver differentiated, innovative and customer-centric services to major corporations worldwide enabling them to stimulate further revenues, increase productivity, control costs and security.

Prior to joining BT Rakesh spent a number of years at the consultancy arms of Ernst & Young and Adventis. Here he led a number of mobility focussed strategic initiatives in the US, the UK and across Asia Pacific. During his consultancy years Rakesh worked closely at board level with a number of major communications companies including Orange, T Mobile, Nextel and Eurotel in the Czech Republic. A respected and frequent speaker at leading industry forums, Rakesh is a passionate and evangelistic presenter.

Robin Mersh
Chief Operating Officer, ex-officio member - Board of Directors,
DSL Forum

Robin joined the Forum as Chief Operating Officer in July 2006 and is the senior full time executive. He has worked in the telecommunications industry for over 14 years, starting in sales and sales management for Cable & Wireless and then moving onto BT before meeting his wife and moving to the US in 1999.

Robin has worked in business development and alliance management for various OSS software companies in the US.

Mostly in network and service provisioning and activation for companies like Astracon, TTI Telecom and Evolving Systems, where he negotiated and managed several large OEM agreements. He is originally from Cambridge in the UK. He received a B.A. degree (with Honours) from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London in 1992. He now lives in North Carolina.

Lydia Aldejohann
Head of Business Innovation,
Nokia Siemens Networks

"Television is dead. Long live Television. It is clear that television is now the last medium to finally wake up and reinvent itself. The main cause of this is the realization that passive TV consumption has had its day. The internet generation now demands more of a television program than just one-dimensional access to information and entertainment formats. It also wants to be able to compile a customized program anytime, anywhere and above all use it interactively."


As Head of Business Innovation Lydia is responsible within Nokia Siemens Networks to define and implement innovative business models with Siemens or together with partners. Previously she was a Director Cooperation and Alliances in Siemens Communication taking care of co-operation strategies and evaluation of M&A targets.

Before assuming this position, she was a Vice President Consumer Marketing for Mobile Phones, responsible for product definition and marketing. Before joining Siemens in October 2001, Lydia held various leadership positions in telecom industry such as Senior Director in Lycos Mobile, as head of Product Marketing Telecommunications in Giesecke & Devrient, a leading smartcard supplier and in VIAG Interkom (now O2), most recently as Head of Marketing New Channels. Lydia started her career in Mannesmann Mobilfunk (Vodafone) as a Marketing Consultant. Lydia has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Münster, Germany.

Anette Schaefer
Director EMEA, Broadband and Entertainment Strategies,
Yankee Group (Moderator)

"Network operators need to stay ahead of the unstoppable force of convergence arising from digitized content, consumer-embracing technology guerrillas with a grassroots appeal and revolutionary power, and feature rich devices that create options for consumers and increases pressure for new services and functions. Yankee Group believes that the 'Anywhere Consumer' will reject legacy service and choose open platforms, enjoying unfettered access to new applications with new business models connecting to a variety of networks on an ad-hoc basis."

As director of the Broadband & Media EMEA Decision Service, Anette Schaefer manages all research and consulting. Schaefer extensively monitors consumer market developments and the competition in the media industry. She analyzes the technologies and the overall market convergence, strategies and infrastructure.

Prior to joining Yankee Group, she worked 15 years as a management consultant in the United States and Europe. Schaefer advised clients from the cable, TV, media and investment industry—such as Disney, Universal, Bertelsmann, AOL Time Warner and NBC—in market entrance strategies, business planning and marketing of new services. She also participated in the M&A of cable, telecom as well media companies and was responsible for the implementation.

Schaefer has extensive knowledge in the areas of business case development, commercial due diligence, competitive benchmarking, market research, consumer marketing strategy and the overall structure of the global media, entertainment and broadband industry. She also participates regularly as speaker on conferences and is member of international industry focus groups.

Joseph Lababidi
Senior Manager, Communications and High-Tech Network Practice
Accenture, (Moderator)

"With broadband’s increasing penetration, service providers are racing to launch new services. Similarly, the complexity of network support and managing these offerings is also accelerating. Accenture believes the next generation of operations systems and software is vital to manage this complexity and critical for any provider that wants to reap the full benefits of broadband."

Joseph Lababidi is a Senior Manager within the Communications and High-Tech group at Accenture. He is currently focused on next-generation operational support systems (NGOSS) and large scale telecommunications systems rollout. Mr. Lababidi is also working in the areas of WiMAX and fiber-to-the-home infrastructures and supporting systems.

Mr. Lababidi brings extensive project management experience in the telecommunications industry. He has managed large-scale and complex integration programs, including the delivery of interactive television infrastructure, for many leading global telecommunications companies. In addition, Mr. Lababidi has worked on business solutions systems (BSS) in the areas of customer relationship management, billing and business intelligence. He also has overseen operations support systems (OSS) in the areas of order management, service provisioning, service assurance, and work-force automation systems. Mr. Lababidi serves on the International Engineering Consortium (IEC) Publications Advisory Board (PAB). Mr. Lababidi attended Imperial College (London) where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical and electronic engineering. He also attended University College (London) where he received a Master of Science degree in computer science.

Per Olof Stark
Vice President of Sales EMEA,
PacketFront

"What Telecom players have been struggling with; what usually requires considerable time and resources, impacting on operations and time to market, PF can demonstrate live, right here on stage, proving that setting up an innovative triple play solution is a piece of cake!"


Educated at the Royal University of Technology in Stockholm. Per Olof Stark, started in 1987 to work with the first city based networks in Sweden as technical sales support for IBM. Involved with evolving school based Networks to networks for the municipalities extending to residential. Per Olof Stark, also studied at IBM program for Client executives in INSEAD and took responsibility for the Swedish social security account.

Additionally, a Member of the IBM European Social Security council, Per Olof Stark was recruited to Cisco systems in 1995, where he was responsible for city networks and social security. Recruited to Cisco Internet Communication Software group which worked with Software that enabled and enhanced the operation of networks responsible for Nordic sales. Recruited to Cisco Carrier Telia team which was responsible for business development. Finally, recruited to PacketFront in 2002 as their Vice President of Sales EMEA.

Helmut Leopold,
Director, Platform and Technology Management,
Telekom Austria AG

"Next-generation broadband technology creates challenges for all areas within the telecommunications industry. Especially IPTV is having a disruptive impact on traditional media businesses. Telecom operators are embarking on TV at a time when the way it is consumed and delivered is changing radically. The entertainment industry has come under extreme pressure to modernise itself and is experiencing massive turbulence due to digitization, piracy, erosion of core businesses, creation of new channels and product categories, and new competitive forms of content, where especially social networks will play a key role.

Thus, the major challenge in the next generation broadband world, for both
telcos and content providers, is to align their different objectives and
interests and find mutually viable business models to monetise real new
multimedia services."

Helmut Leopold has been with Telekom Austria since 1999, where he currently holds the position of Director of Platform and Technology Management. In this position he is responsible for the network, product and IT development as well as product management for the Wholesale unit.

Previously, from 1994, he filled various management positions at Alcatel. From 1989 to 1994 he served as a research engineer at Alcatel ELIN Research Center, where he covered the fields of high performance networking and multimedia communications.

Mr. Leopold has been always actively involved in European broadband projects (ESPRIT, RACE, ACTS, IST and COST) and in international standardization (ETSI). He is Vice President of the Austrian Research Center Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien (FTW), President of the IPV6 Task Force in Austria, and Chairman of the Broadband Services Forum (BSF).

Stephen Petheram,
Content Marketing Manager,
MICROSOFT TV EMEA

Stephen has over 15 years experience in the provision of software solutions to the TV content production, distribution, aggregation and broadcast sectors.

Prior to joining Microsoft he was VP Client Services at a London-based broadcast management software company managing accounts such as UPC, Flextech, Jetix (formerly Fox Kids), Fox UK, Fox Spain, La7, CineNova and TV Cabo. Before that Stephen was General Manager of Lysis UK, a London-based subsidiary of the Kudelski Group of Cheseaux,

Switzerland. Lysis UK developed rights and content management software targeted at the TV content owners, particularly the U.S. west coast studios.
In 2001 Kudelski acquired Lysis SA of Lausanne, Switzerland, a software company specializing in advanced content management solutions for digital television where Stephen was the VP Rights Management for the Lysis group. Lysis customers include the cable companies ntl, Telewest, Mediakabel, Cablecom, Madritel and Ono.

Concision specialized in the development and installation of intellectual property rights management software for the entertainment industry. Its clients included leading entertainment companies such as Paramount Television, Universal Television, Canal+, MNET, British Film Institute, Front Row Television and Telewest Communications.

Jeff Jones
Vice President, Strategy & Business Development,
Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG)

Jeff is Vice President of Disney Internet Group’s strategy & business development functions focusing on leveraging Disney’s assets into mobile and internet new ventures, partnerships and acquisitions across EMEA. Key priorities at the moment are building direct to consumer business models in gaming, video and mobile services. Balancing valuable old media relationships with the new media opportunities is a key challenge. Jeff believes that critical to Disney’s success will be exploiting the interactive characteristics of new media through personalization, community and UGC opportunities under Disney’s brand.

Prior to joining Disney Jeff worked as a consultant at Adventis leading the sale and delivery of strategic initiatives and new ventures in the telecom and media sector across the globe. Clients included, Disney, Orange, Sprint PCS, SKT (Korea), Earthlink (US), Ofcom & Nokia. Key projects include the launch of several MVNOs including BTs and Helio; development of BT’s converged mobile and fixed phone offering, Fusion; key technical and economic adviser to Ofcom’s Telecom Strategic Review. In a previous life Jeff confesses to being a banker. Jeff holds an MBA from London Business School and a degree in computational physics from Manchester.

Myles MacBean
General Manager, Online & interactiveTV,
Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG) EMEA & LatAm

"Let me entertain you! The technology may change but in the end it is still all about entertaining the customer! Nevertheless we have only just started to apply the timeless value of story telling to the new medium that is broadband connected media. It will take the creative vision of today’s “always on” youngsters to truly unlock the new mix of interactivity, personalisation and studio production values provided by the broadband web. However commercial reality does not change, and our shared imperative is to find a stable commercial ecosystem that gives the consumer what they want, when they want it, at a price they can afford".

Mr. MacBean joined the Walt Disney Internet Group, where he has held a variety of international responsibilities across commercial, technical, and production disciplines, in 2000. In his present role, Mr. MacBean has general management responsibility for Disney's on-line and interactive TV portfolio in EMEA and Latin America and technology/operations responsibility for Disney's on-line services outside the United States. He is also managing director of Walt Disney Hungary Ltd.

Prior to joining Disney, he worked in major telecoms and Internet organizations, starting in semiconductor optoelectronic device engineering and progressing to software/systems engineering. He became involved in the commercial exploitation of the Internet when it emerged from the scientific community. He has held a series of senior management roles with responsibility for the development, delivery, product management, and distribution of Internet/intranet services, culminating in leadership of BT's eCommerce product division.

Paul Szucs
Senior Manager, Technology and Standards,
Sony Europe

"Consumers accept and even appreciate content protection, because all their favourite blockbusters and TV shows are available in the highest possible quality on whatever device/medium they happen to be using, wherever they are; the content providers and aggregators have a sufficiently robust and versatile platform to deploy various content provision business models; creators and purveyors of quality audio/video systems and devices are not inappropriately burdened or restricted by the integration of content protection in their products"

Born 1961 in London, Paul gained a BSc Honours degree in Physics from Loughborough University of Technology, UK, 1984. He joined Sony 1993 after nine years in hardware and software design and development in the fields of telecommunications, industrial control and data acquisition, and computer-aided quality control.

With Sony he has worked in the areas of digital video broadcasting, interactive TV, home networking, and content protection and rights management. He has contributed actively to several standardisation bodies, including being deputy chair of the DVB technical group developing CPCM, and has participated in several European collaborative R&D projects.

His current position is Manager, Technology & Standards within the Business Development Group of Sony Europe, and is based in Stuttgart, Germany. Paul is a Chartered Engineer, Member of the IET and IEEE.
 

Dr. Yair Shapira
Vice President Marketing,
Jungo Ltd.

"Today, major Operators are preparing for a marketing battle that will enable them to provide compelling broadband content and services to residential and small business subscribers. What operators want is to keep subscribers satisfied while increasing their revenues. In this fast changing environment, it makes sense to simplify the Operator’s service delivery and subscriber’s user experience without incurring further cost.".

Yair Shapira, Ph.D., Jungo's VP of Marketing - Yair brings to Jungo a wide range of expertise in the broadband networking market. Prior to joining Jungo, Yair held several to management positions in high-tech firms. His most recent role was VP of Business Development for Flash Networks, a leader in high-quality mobile service delivery platforms. Prior to that Shapira was Executive Vice President at Camelot IT Ltd., a developer of enterprise network security systems.

Rob van den Dam
EMEA Telco Industry Lead,
IBM Global Services

"It is critical that telecom operators defend and grow their share of broadband revenues. They will have little option to move up the telemedia value chain into content distribution. Telecom operators are well-placed to deliver enhanced customer experience by enabling choice, flexibility and control. They have unique capabilities to extend the scope and scale of services, to provide user convenience, and to play an important role in targeted advertising. However, in doing so, they have to make a substantial organisational, cultural, technological, operational and business model transformation".
 

Rob van den Dam is the European Telecommunications Leader for the IBM Institute for Business Value. He has worked in the telecommunications industry for more than 15 years, in the areas of multimedia, content and emerging distribution channels, including mobiles, Internet and IPTV. Current focus is on the role and opportunities of the different players in the evolving content value chain.
 

Ajay Pande,
Director of Content Partnerships, Content & Future Media Team,
Alcatel-Lucent

"Content is King and Distribution is Emperor in this arising converged world of entertainment services. Monetization of these new fixed-mobile services will require a much closer marriage between the Intellectual Property rights holders and the technology enablers. Only then will we see real revenue generating services being launched that drive end-user consumption and benefit all those involved within the end-to-end ecosystem”

As part of this team, Ajay is responsible for developing partnerships with key content players to help facilitate interaction and development of opportunities between content / media companies and Alcatel-Lucent's target customers.

Prior to the Alcatel-Lucent merger, Ajay joined the Triple Play Marketing team of Alcatel's Fixed Solutions Division in 2004. As part of the marketing team, Ajay was responsible for pioneering innovative Triple Play end-user applications. Ajay was also Europe and South Content Lead and as such was responsible for helping to facilitate coordination between Alcatel's IPTV customers and the Content Industry.

Prior to his current role, Ajay worked as an Applications Engineer in Alcatel's Broadband Networking Division. As part of this role Ajay helped architect and deploy end-to-end IPTV solutions. Ajay Pande joined Alcatel in 2001. Prior to joining Alcatel, Ajay worked at Nortel Networks as a Senior Design Engineer for the 1-Meg Modem xDSL project. Ajay is also an active member on the Board of Directors of the Broadband Services Forum (BSF) - a leading industry forum fostering dialogue and collaboration between key players within the end-to-end broadband ecosystem.
 

Richard Jukes
Head of Content,
Playboy TV

“In this ever changing landscape of broadcasting, “adult” continues to forge the way for technology advances and consumer early adoption. With a hugely crammed and disparate selection of platform EPGs and an audience demanding greater personal choice, instantly available content available in short or long form, at home or on the move, the future for broadcasting will be the most adaptable and cost-effective platforms. IPTV, video-on-demand and mobile streaming through DVB-H and Wifi look to offer the greatest options in today’s moving markets with lower overheads and fewer restrictions. But let it not be said that this is the death of linear TV as we know it! There will remain a place in television for the “premiere appointment to view” or probably better termed 'water cooler TV'".

"Richard is responsible for overseeing the strategy, development, and management of all channels and content produced by Playboy TV UK. This includes Playboy TV, Playboy One, The Adult Channel, Spice Extreme, Trade TV and Climax3 in the UK; Playboy TV France; Playboy TV Germany; a Playboy block on Das Vierte; the Adult Channel Israel; and Private Spice in Europe. He is also responsible for IPTV and Video on Demand content, management of content supply for Playboy's wireless business, plus hotels, broadband, DVD and online.

Richard Jukes has a broad range of creative, operational and commercial experience in broadcasting, including new media and associated revenue streams. He has been responsible for the launch of 13 digital TV channels in the UK and Europe and has been particularly involved in wireless, including gaming, SMS, MMS and 3G and how these services drive greater viewership and revenue.

Richard was previously Director of Programmes at Enteraction TV and Managing Director of The Dating Channel."

Dr. Lindsay Frost,
Manager 3G Technologies, NEC EUROPE, and Chairman of Wi-Fi Mobile Convergence Marketing Task Group,
WI-Fi Alliance

"802.11 Wi-Fi will bring "broadband to the hand" in a huge variety of formats in just one or two more years. Services will start with cheap voice (VoIP), but will rapidly scale up to everything people want to see or hear instantly and easily. Voice applications will be at the heart of many applications, but enhanced by context-aware services able to exchange images and sound in high quality. Wi-Fi Certified products will ensure that quality."

Dr. Lindsay Frost has a Ph.D. in physics and has been associated with the WFA Wi-Fi/Cellular Convergence Marketing Task Group since its formation. He was team leader for the Usage-Cases sub-committee and an active member in the Device Class sub-committee. His background is in 3GPP/UMTS Standardization, WLAN optimization, roaming and IMS services.

Currently he is manager of the 3G Technologies Group at NEC Network Laboratories in Heidelberg, Germany. Before joining NEC he worked for European companies on computing and telematics and as a research manager in universities in Germany, Italy and Australia.

Matteo Gatta,
Vice President, Strategic Planning and Projects,
Belgacom

"While broadband connectivity has initially been the driver for the telecom sector, it is increasingly becoming a catalyst for a major revolution in the telecom, media and entertainment sector. Technological developments create an unprecedented service potential, but at the same time highlight the limitations of the classical business models and networks. Consumers are overwhelmed by the enormous choice of new networks, services, applications and devices. The future is not about finding the right service or using the most powerful technology - it is about helping the customer to use these services, networks and devices which improve his quality of life. Companies will only succeed in case they're able to transform according to the changing expectations. We, as industry professionals, call it 'convergence' - customers call it 'peace of mind'".

Matteo Gatta is in charge of Strategic Planning & Projects at Belgacom, the leading telecommunication operator in Belgium with business in Fixed Line Services, Mobile Communication Services (Proximus), ICT (Telindus) and International Carrier (Belgacom ICS).

Previously Matteo Gatta covered the position of Marketing Director at Belgacom’s International Carrier Services S.A./NV (BICS), the world’s 8th largest voice and data transit operator, with 1 Bio€ in sales and 285 employees. As part of BICS management team, Matteo has been instrumental to the transformation of BICS from single product regional player (voice) into leading carrier active in market consolidation, in Next Generation “all-IP” services, and in strategic supply relationships to mobile operators with the Global Mobile VillageTM product portfolio. BICS has twice been voted “Best Wholesale Carrier” in the 2005 and 2003 TotalTelecom World Communications Awards, and in 2004 was classified Most Competitive Voice Carrier by its peers in a Broad Group survey.

Prior to joining Belgacom, Matteo worked for 2 years at GTS Ebone (later KPNQwest) as Director of Product Development where he launched to market products in the area of IP, Security and Hosting. Prior to GTS Ebone he worked at Infostrada and Telecom Italia Mobile, covering several expert positions in the area of Network Planning & Engineering. Throughout his professional experience, Matteo has built a solid reputation in the industry, as contributor to several industry fora, IETF, MSF, TIPHON (latest 90’s and early 2000’) and more recently GSMA Interworking Group (IWG) and IP Interworking Initiative (IPI).  Matteo Gatta holds a Laurea in Electronic Engineering, a Master in Information Technology at Cefriel, Polytechnic of Milan and has recently successfully completed the Middle Management Post Graduated Programme at Vlerick Business School. He is fluent in English and Italian.

Alan Brown
Head of Broadband,
eircom

Alan Brown is Head of Broadband and Internet for eircom, spearheading the company’s drive to maintain market leadership in an IP-centric, application-rich converged future. He is responsible for strategy development as well as the operational management of the company’s ISP infrastructure and new product introductions. With over 20 years of domestic and international experience in the Telecommunications industry, Alan has held a variety of commercial and technical roles within the eircom group. Most recently he was Managing Director of eircom subsidiary Lan Communications, a leading Network Systems Integrator in the Irish market.

He has also held the roles of Head of Sales and Marketing for eircom Wholesale, fostering strong commercial relationships with every telecommunications operator in the country, and the position of Commercial Manager for eircom Hosting, developing and selling a range of data hosting and managed services from eircom's City West operation. In the late 1990s, as CEO of eircom's US-based operation, he spent 3 years in Connecticut actively working with state organisations such as the IDA to attract foreign direct investment to Ireland and played a significant role in the development of the call-centre and data centre industries in the country.

Urs Geiser
Head of Product Management
Swisscom

"The real demand for functional convergent services today is restricted to the segment of business customers. Today residential customers are not asking for convergent services. The main, simple need of the mass market is to watch TV, make phone calls and surf with high-speed on the internet. The customer prefers to use those services in an easy way at low prices. Nevertheless, in a long term perspective a Telco can cover the customer needs only with a cost efficient convergent IP-Platform. The main driver to justify the IP platform investments (IMS etc.) for an incumbent isn’t to increase the turnover with convergent services. The aim is to save platform costs and to improve the usability of the services. The main drivers to migrate customers to the new, cost effective IP platform are flat rates for telephony, high-speed Internet and a customer-tailored, high quality TV content".

Urs Geiser has been leading the product management for Swisscom/Bluewin broadband access for residential products for 6 years. He started to build up the residential broadband market for the subsidiary company Bluewin which has been fully integrated in Swisscom in 2005. Today Swisscom has more than 1 million broadband customers and 68% market share of the DSL market in Switzerland.