GCCM Online Meeting - May 2020 11^th & 12^th

Based at Lago di Como in Italy, VSC provides strategic advisory services in M&A, Business Development & Media for the telecommunication industry. Over the last 25 years, Erik developed extensive expertise and deep domain knowledge working at major telecom companies. His international career includes senior & executive level positions. Over the years, Erik has been a regular speaker & moderator at major international telecom conferences.

An expert in wholesale voice and SMS messaging with over 20 years’ experience in the telecom industry as former VP of Sales & Carrier Relations at tyntec, one of the largest A2P SMS service providers globally and as Regional Manager at Verizon where he headed up a team responsible for international voice services in Europe. José also previously managed operator relations in Central and Southern Europe for Netsize, a Gemalto company. José holds a degree in business administration from the Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt a. M.

Specialties:
Launch SMS services / Shift from Voice to Messaging / A2P SMS Monetization / MNO revenue assurance / SMS platforms / P2P SMS Cost optimization / Training Sales and Carrier Relations / Wholesale Voice / VoIP / Integration of Operators, Carriers, Aggregators into value chain of OTT services / Off-net connectivity for OTT services.

Melvin de Jonge is senior product manager in the Marketing division, dealing with the development and go-to-market of wholesale services for Mobile Operators worldwide, that vary from pure connectivity to disruptive solutions as Big Data reporting tools and security/protection services.

Prior to joining Sparkle, he worked for TIM Group from 1998 to 2009 gaining a deep experience in mobile value added services for retail markets in Italy and abroad. He was appointed in several marketing roles as innovation specialist, product manager and customer base analyst.

He started his career as an ICT consultant at KPN in The Netherlands.

Melvin holds an MSc in Econometrics & Operations Research from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands).

Halil Kama is a peering advisor for the London Internet Exchange (LINX). The largest non-profit purely mutual Internet Exchange operator in the world. He has several years experience of working at the heart of the internet with vast exposure to over 750+ of the top ranking internet & telecoms companies globally, enabling connections to millions of users daily.

Andreas was the Founder and Group CEO of Epsilon Global Communications, which includes Epsilon service provider and Cataleya technology businesses. He is now continuing to supporting the industry’s evolution through his start-up and investment facilitator (Incipio) and his position on the board of Cirrus Core Networks. During his 18 years in the global telecoms community he has contributed to the evolution of the international markets and technologies, creating innovative businesses, and disruptive business models.

After joining Expereo 11 years ago and setting up the first international Expereo office in Singapore back in 2008, Sander now works out of the HQ in Amsterdam as the Chief Commercial Officer. His team is spread out globally across 5 offices. Before joining Expereo Sander worked out of Australia for BT Global Services and Infonet Services Corp. His telecom career started in 1997 with Unisource Business Services and AT&T Unisource in Europe. Nice to know fact: before Sander went into telecom he was a helicopter pilot.

Miguel started in 1999 as a developer and in 2002 he co-founded an MSP in West Africa. In 2007 he also co-founded what would be the first Wi-Fi ISP in Cape Verde. Five years later, Miguel accepted the invitation from Ezelink Telecom in Dubai, to revolutionize the company strategy in the Intelligent Hotspot, IoT and Smart City solutions as Director of Technology.

Afterwards, since 2015, Miguel has been working in Silicon Valley and been involved in several projects to help Service Providers monetize their voice business. Currently, he is Vice President of Product Line Management for Applications at  Enghouse .

Miguel Calvo Vervaet has over 25 years’ experience in Telecommunications & Retail industries.

His experience includes leading and scaling telecommunications companies from startup phase to mature businesses in companies such as Orange, Ookla, Jersey Telecom, Nextgen, Link2One (Telefonica Joint Venture) and MACH.

Also Board member & Advisor at start-ups focused on strategic guidance to achieve rapid growth and launching exiting innovations.

Miguel is an international polyglot who lived in 13 Countries & travelled for business to over 110 countries.

20 years ago, James built up the customer training division for one of the founding companies of MEF (Comverse Technology), 10 years ago he was managing carrier relationships with Mblox (an early pioneer in introducing A2P SMS to businesses around the globe) and now acts as Director of Programmes at MEF.

Even after 30 years active in all corners of the Telecommunications industry, James has not lost his passion and drive for promoting Telecommunications as a fantastic, positive means for development and change globally. He lives and breathes Business Messaging, Omnichannel, Customer Journey Orchestration, Mobile Subscriber Intelligence and Monetisation.

In recent years, James has travelled the world speaking on Customer Engagement and worked with both novice and seasoned entrepreneurs on scaling from an idea to a successful business, Business Messaging being a particular area of focus.

Where MEF is concerned, James has now come full circle – so many of his former customers are already members of our organisation!

Edwin is a technology enthusiast and an expert in Telecommunications with over 13 years worth of experience in A2P and P2P messaging, voice and signalling. Since starting in the telecom industry, Edwin has performed numerous commercial, technical and operational roles at messaging hubs and cloud communications platforms having been responsible for launching technically and operationally the Quintatech and HGC messaging hubs.
Currently Edwin works at Vonage as a Senior Carrier Services Director and is responsible for ensuring that customers have access to best in class telco connectivity.
Edwin holds an MSE in Mechanical Engineering with a specialisation in Automation and intelligent systems from the Technical University of Lisbon.

Dario Betti worked in creating new business opportunities in the fast-changing digital world.

He enjoys the cultural challenges of working in different countries it gives deeper and richer engagement. Previously he has also worked in the Middle East, for Qatar based group Ooredoo (in Qatar, Myanmar and Indonesia). For Ooredoo he was part of the launch team for its greenfield mobile operator in Myanmar and repositioned the mobile brands of Indosat in Indonesia. He has also worked for XL Axiata. finding new ideas and developing them in strong businesses in this dynamic, and unique market.

At T-Mobile International / Deutsche Telekom he brought new service concepts and proposition into life focusing on new interface for data services (from portal to mobile apps). A key aspect of my work: included the international strategy for rolling out a portfolio to the entire European portfolio of mobile operators and the focus on transforming the company into customer centric organisation.

In his previous role as a Senior Analyst at Ovum, the consulting company, he specialised in the management and regulation of new media. At Ovum he led research and consulting projects on many different topics including digital television, video on demand, mobile multimedia messaging and business models for mobile content services.

As a member of the [email protected] group, he advised operators, regulators, network and device vendors on services and product strategies and technologies including video, gaming, adult services, music, and location-based services.

Prior to joining Ovum, he completed an MSc in Media Management from the University of Stirling and a BA in Communication Studies and Management from Leeds University. He is fluent in Italian, English and Spanish.

Fabrizio Salanitri is CEO and founder of HORISEN AG, Swiss software company with 17 years’ long experience in telecommunication software and application solutions. Fabrizio’s in depth knowledge and experience in SMS business resulted in state-of-art SMS Platform, cloud based and carrier neutral suite for A-Z SMS Wholesale business.
During his career, he’s been working with companies and industries of all sizes. Therefore, all HORISEN’s products and services are perfect for both enterprise and retail customers – and all of them have one thing in common: they are designed professionally and they are meeting the highest production quality and standards.