Kaveh Hushyar - Telecom Extreme Transformation: The Road to a Digital Service Provider

The idea of the book began many years ago between the three of us while working on several projects, in different companies (Service Provider, Product Manufacture), different organizational positions and definitely with different views of how things should be done, but always with one goal in mind: Get it done right, on time, within budget and with no compromises on quality! This book is a work product of this collaboration between the authors over the last 2 years while we focused on the learnings of our combined knowledge, failures, and experiences over all the projects we executed in the telecommunication industry on a global level. If this book contributes in any way to help plan and execute a transition from a CSP to a DSP, we will consider it a success.

You cant write a book like this without mentioning the mentors, tutors, and teachers who guided our professional career. Also, we got many powerful inputs from thought leaders in the industry while we were debating details in certain sections of this book. In summary, it would not have been possible to write this book without the meaningful input and commitment made by close friends, family, and colleagues.

For the Mentors and Tutors, the list has to start with Frank Ianna, former Chief Quality Officer of AT&T who is a global lead in network reliability; George Nolen, former President and CEO of Siemens North America who taught us to look at things always from different angles but foremost from the benefit we create for the end-customer, that if what we do, creates value for them, and if this cant be answered with a convincing YES, then it must create value for anybody in the value chain.

Our main teacher, when it comes to flawless execution of network operations, is John McCanuel, former AT&T Senior Vice President; when it comes to looking at subjects from a geo-economic and geostrategic perspective, our teachers include Anton Schaaf, former Group Board member of Siemens Networks and CEO Coach for southeast Asia, Joe Cook, former Senior Vice President of Verizon for Global Network Planning and Engineering, and Alberto Gross, President and CEO of CLA direct, an innovative telecommunication Solution Provider for Latin America and Caribbean markets; and last but not least, Karel Pienaar, Navi Naidoo, Hassan Motalebpoor, Edris Saberi, and Pete DaSilva were responsible for influencing our thinking for executing projects in Europe-Middle East and Asia. Our appreciation goes to Tom Rutledge, Chairman and CEO of Charter Communications. Toms visionary view about the US telecommunication industry had a big influence on all of us. Many thanks to all for coaching us on the cultural differences between our heritage and the way topics can be approached with different cultural values and in a diverse cultural environment.

Among the many people who very early in our professions introduced us to the CLOUD based delivery concept of functionalities, we have to thank our friend and great Entrepreneur, Michael Tessler, former President and CEO of Broadsoft, who founded the company and build it to the global market leader in cloud-based unified communications solutions. Also, very influential in our way to position business solution into a global customer base were Harald Link, a Thai-German businessman, industrialist, philanthropist, and owner of B. Grimm of Bangkok, Thailand, and Tzvika Friedman, former CEO of Alvarion and currently an active investor in global innovative telecommunication business solutions. Many intensive breakfast meetings influenced our long-lasting thinking.

On the complex issue of optical Networking, we are grateful that we had very good counselors and coaching in Simon Zelinger, former Vice President of AT&T, and Dr. Hans-Juergen Schmidtke, a Communications Network Specialist experienced in optical networking solutions, now working with Facebook on their influential Telecom Infrastructure Project (TIP).

In addition, our appreciation goes to the countless hours we spend during our professional careers on multifaceted technology challenges with Behrokh Samadi, Jim Medica, Robert Covel, Chris Dressler, Nikos Theodosopoulos, and Mike Hayashi.