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Latest - Business Sector: Telecommunications

Professor Edwin Candy

Professor Edwin Candy cut his teeth helping build command and control radio systems in his native Australia.  He worked for the Australian subsidiary of Pye, the Cambridge UK-based electronics company.  He spent a year seconded to Digital Equipment Corporation in the USA where he learned about computer architectures.   By the 1980s he was a business manager at Philips which had taken over Pye.  He moved to the UK in 1987 and conceived and created the Universal Mobile Telephone System 3G specification with 25 partners.  This standard was the basis for 3G mobile communications incorporating Internet services.

Professor William Webb

Professor William Webb chose as his PhD thesis finished in 1992 the use of variable level modulation in radio networks to raise the amount of data which can be carried. It is used widely in radio networks today. He worked for UK wireless consultancies until he moved to Motorola’s world HQ in Chicago becoming director of strategy. He joined the newly formed Ofcom communications regulator in the UK in 2003 and ran a 35 person R&D group. He often worked in mixed groups of engineers and economists where he developed his skills as a forecaster of technology developments. He now runs his own consultancy used internationally to advise CEOs, government and advisory bodies on issues of wireless communications.

Alastair Macdonald CB

Alastair Macdonald CB spent 32 years as a civil servant working on advice to ministers and executing policy for the IT industry. He was the civil servant in charge of the IT82 awareness campaign initiated by Lord Ken Baker. Macdonald was in charge of the privatisation of BT, a world first which started the liberalisation of the telecommunications industry. He was in charge of the Y2K efforts to avoid a catastrophe with the change of date at the start of this century. He took part in the decisions to widen the offering of mobile phone networks in the UK from two to four vendors.

Sarah Bond

Sarah Bond leads Microsoft’s gaming business development team. She and her team are responsible for cultivating and managing Microsoft’s gaming partnerships, crafting and executing deals and negotiations and shaping strategy and M&A. Sarah’s organization is global with presence in Redmond, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and London.

Prior to Microsoft Sarah held a variety of senior roles at T-Mobile, including leading the Corporate Strategy and Development team, responsible for cross-functional strategic initiatives, major investments, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions. She was a member of the team that led T-Mobile’s turnaround.
Sarah started her career at McKinsey & Company, where she was an Associate Partner in the West Coast office focused on the consumer technology sector. Sarah holds a BA in Economics from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dr Stephen Castell

Dr Stephen Castell has worked in all four corners of the IT industry.  He was worked on the computing side and in telecommunications.   He has worked as a user implementing complex systems and as a vendor of information products and services.  He spent years advising UK venture capitalists on what were and what were not the best companies to invest in.  Finally he has spent decades as an expert witness in numerous legal disputes between vendors and users when the IT system supplied did not fit the expectations of the buyers.  This gives him a unique insight into the failures of IT.

Shirine Khoury-Haq

Shirine’s career has been a transition from finance to consulting, and then to operations. She started in the US public sector before moving on to telecommunications, consumer products, retail and then insurance. She has led global teams delivering large scale technology and business change in FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 organisations, including several mergers and acquisitions. She has worked in the US, UK, across Europe and in Asia Pacific. She spent her childhood traveling around the world due to her father’s job and had lived on every continent except for Antarctica before the age of 12.