Kim Krogh Andersen

Product & Technology – Group Executive, Telstra

Kim Krogh Andersen joined Telstra in January 2020 as Group Executive, Product & Technology.

In this role, he leads Telstra’s Product & Technology function, responsible for delivering Telstra’s product and technology roadmap, including creating and delivering products and solutions for all of Telstra’s customers, as well as driving profitable growth. He has accountability for Telstra’s product strategy and lifecycle, and technology and innovation where products are incubated and brought to scale.

Before joining Telstra, Kim was Senior Vice President, Head of Global Technology Strategy with the Telenor Group, a leading telecommunications company with operations across Scandinavia and Asia. He had responsibility for defining global technology roadmaps as well as leading Telenor’s Global 5G Execution Program as it prepares for the launch of 5G across all of Telenor’s markets.

Previous to this role, Mr Krogh Andersen held a very broad range of roles with Telenor including Director Customer Services Denmark with end to end responsibility for customer service and Chief Marketing Officer for Telenor Global Services with responsibility for product development and management.

Prior to joining Telenor in 2008, Mr Krogh Andersen served as an officer in the Danish Army for 13 years.

Kim is a father of three and is living in the beautiful city of Sydney with his wife and children.

Rahul Atri

Managing Director, Rakuten

Rahul joined Rakuten Mobile in 2019 to head up the Automation Center of Excellence Department, playing a critical role leading end-to-end automation strategy efforts of the Rakuten Mobile cloud-native network.

In 2020 Rahul was appointed as Executive Officer at Rakuten Mobile in Japan and Product and Engineering Head for Rakuten Communications Platform to lead the global operations from its newly established Singapore headquarters.

Rahul hails from northern India and started his career working with greenfield telco operators and startups. He also worked alongside Tareq Amin, Rakuten Mobile CTO, at Reliance Jio, building the company’s very successful green field mobile network in India.

Rahul holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering.

Sandeep Gupta

EVP Network Strategy & Architecture, Airtel

Sandeep Gupta is working with Airtel’s Network service group as Executive Vice President, Strategy & Architecture. Over last eight years of engagement, he has given strategic direction for transformation of Airtel’s wireless network by driving spectrum strategy, device and network ecosystem, and conceptualizing new initiatives for customer experience.

Sandeep has also delivered Airtel’s global engineering & customer experience lab, which is being used for seeding of new technologies and validation of commercial solutions before their mass rollout in the network.

Sandeep has been associated with Telecom Industry for last three decades and has wide experience in technical marketing, business development, product management, designing of solutions & services. Prior to Airtel, he has served various organizations in senior management positions such as Director for Solution sales in Huawei, Head of product marketing at Motorola, while starting his career with C-DoT, India’s premier telecom R&D design center.

Sandeep is also holding key position and engagements with various industry associations such as Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI), ORAN, TIP, Seamless Alliance and COAI, driving standardization, harmonization & innovation.

Sandeep holds Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Electronics & Communication from IIT Roorkee and MBA in Finance & Marketing from Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon.

Jake Saunders

Managing Director & Vice President, Asia Pacific & Advisory Services, ABI Research

Jake Saunders, Managing Director and Vice President, Asia-Pacific & Advisory Services, leads ABI Research’s Asia-Pacific research division. He devotes attention to the Asian market’s carrier strategy, both cellular and satellite, telecommunications infrastructure vendors, mobile device vendors and chipset manufacturers.

Jake’s background comprises more than 25 years of emerging technology consulting and has a proven track record of operations management. Prior to joining ABI Research, Jake was a Research Director at Concise Insight, a mobile telecoms market research company. He also previously served as European Director at the Strategis Group. He has been a regular commentator on BBC Asia Business News, CNBC and CNA. He has been quoted by the Nikkei Review, BBC News, CNN Tech and CNBC News.

Current research topics include telco backhaul, core network architecture, 5G use cases, telco cloud applications, location-based services, as well as RoI and TCO analysis.

Jake holds an M.Sc. in Technology Management from the University of Manchester and a B.Sc. from the University of Canterbury, Kent, UK.

Arvin Siena

VP and Head of Technology Strategy and Transformation Office, PLDT and Smart

Mr. Siena is the Vice President and Head of Technology Strategy and Transformation Office of PLDT and Smart. He started his career in PLDT 25 years ago in Planning and Engineering of Fixed Network. He has led the company in transforming its technology and services from the traditional circuit switch to IP-based and software-driven which enabled PLDT to create new opportunities and transition to become the most advanced integrated telecommunication service provider in the Philippines today. He held various positions covering both Fixed and Wireless (PLDT and Smart) including the Transport Network Planning and Engineering Group where he initiated the transformation of National Domestic Transport Backbone to the most resilient combination of submarine and terrestrial fiber optic employing the latest in optical and IP technology with highest available wavelength capacity. In his very recent post as head of Core Network Planning Engineering and Integration, he pursued the transformation of Mobile and Fixed Core networks to a virtualized infrastructure leading towards a cloud native and NFVi-based systems. He also oversees the End-to-End Service Orchestration (e2eSO) Project which aims to digitalize the customer journey covering entire services and product life cycle of consumer and enterprise customers for both Fixed and Wireless. He was recently appointed to lead the Technology Strategy and Transformation Office.

Kunal Punn

Vice President – Strategy & Transformation, Dtac

Kunal is Head of Corporate Strategy for Dtac, Thailand and is responsible for leading Corporate strategy development and driving execution of strategic projects. He has over 17 years’ of international Telco experience spanning across local markets (Thailand, India) and global roles (Asia, Europe). Prior to joining dtac, Kunal was working as Director Transformation within Telenor Group and responsible for driving Network Transformation initiatives in Asia such as implementing new network operating models with focus on leveraging automation to deliver on operational agility, efficiency and customer experience.

Kunal is passionate about customer experience and believes that Technology is an important enabler to create value for business and consumers. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Information technology , a post graduate diploma in International Business, and has undergone several leadership development programs.

Kailem Anderson

Vice President, Portfolio and Engineering, Blue Planet

Kailem Anderson is Vice President of Portfolio and Engineering for Blue Planet, a division of Ciena. His responsibilities include global ownership of Blue Planet’s portfolio strategy, direction, development and introduction of new disruptive offerings in the areas of automation, orchestration, analytics, software, SaaS and global services.

Well-established in the networking industry for 20 years, Kailem has held various leadership positions at Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft, where he focused on introducing new technologies to market in the areas of networking, security, data center, automation and SaaS.

Kailem holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and an MBA from the University of New South Wales and resides in Sydney, Australia.

Pradeep De Almeida

Group CTO, Dialog Axiata PLC

Experienced Chief Technology Officer working in the telecommunications industry. Information technology professional skilled in all generations of technology starting from 2G, CDMA, WIMAX, WiFI, 3G, HSPA, 4G, IoT, and 5G. Technology Strategist , Visionary with a strong track record of setting the technology strategy and implementation of same . Proven Leadership skills in maintaining the technology leadership position for more than 20 years as well as managing a work force of more than 1000 staff.