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Charles Curry - ITSF Chairman, MD, Chronos Technology Ltd email»
Charles founded the International Telecom Sync Forum (ITSF) in 2001 and chairs the ITSF Steering Group. He is also a member of the Workshop for Sync in Telecommunications Systems (WSTS) Steering Group which meets annually in Boulder, Colorado. Charles is on the Steering Group for the UK governmental department - Business Innovation and Skills – Technology Strategy Board - Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) for Digital Systems (previously Location and Timing) and is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). Charles is also a member of the Industry Advisory Boards to Universities of Bath and Liverpool, Electrical and Electronics Faculties.
Ghani Abbas - International Standards Manager, Ericsson email»
Has spent the last fifteen years in SDH transmission business, initially with GPT and later with Marconi Communications, UK. He is international standards manager in the in the Network Engineering and Technology department and currently is rapporteur of Q9 in the ITU SG15 which develops standards for transport equipment and network protection and restoration. He is also an active member of ITU SG 13 (Next Generation Networks).
Bob Cockshott - Director, Location & Timing Programme, Digital Systems KTN/NPL email»
Bob is employed by the UK's National Physical Laboratory manages the location and timing programme in the Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network, which is funded by the UK's Technology Strategy Board.. He joined NPL and the network in early 2006 and has a technical background as a systems engineer and project manager in spacecraft instrumentation.
Tommy Cook - Calnex email»
Tommy Cook is the Founder and CEO of Calnex Solutions. He has over 25 years experience in the Telecoms Industry. His experience has been in telecoms test and measurement having been employed by Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies before starting Calnex. Tommy has participated in a number of Standards forums over his career, and has recently joined ITU-T Study Group 15 to participant in the discussions on Timing-over-Packet solutions. Tommy holds a Master of Science degree in Digital Techniques from Herriot-Watt University, Edinburgh and a Bachelor of Science degree with Honours in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Paisley University.
Chris Farrow - Technical Services Manager, Chronos Technology email»
Chris joined Chronos from Marconi’s UK Technical Assistance Centre in Liverpool in January 2006. Whilst at Marconi, Chris was responsible for the Field Trial, Rollout and Support of Enhanced Synchronisation Products and Services within Marconi’s System X Switching and SDH products. At Chronos Chris is responsible for all professional services focused on the sync product area including Synchronisation MasterClass, Sync Audit and network planning consultancy, customer demonstrations and SyncWatch Development.
Jean-Loup Ferrant - ITSF Vice Chairman email»
Jean-Loup Ferrant graduated from INPG  Grenoble (France), joined Alcatel in 1975 and worked on analog systems, PCM and digital cross-connects. He has been working on SDH synchronization since 1990 and on SDH and OTN standardization for more than 15 years in ETSI TM1, TM3 and ITU-T SG13 and SG15. He has been rapporteur of SG15 Q13 on network synchronization since year 2001. He was one of the Alcatel-Lucent experts on synchronization in transport networks until he retired in March 2009. He is still rapporteur of SG15 Q13, sponsored by Calnex.
Tim Frost – Principal Technologist, Symmetricom, Inc. email»
Tim Frost joined Symmetricom Inc. as a Principal Technologist, working on next-generation synchronization techniques. Prior to Symmetricom, he was a System Architect with Zarlink Semiconductor for seven years, where he worked on their Convergence product line, dealing with carrying TDM circuits over packet networks, and in particular on the synchronization aspects of carrying real-time information over packet networks. He has been active in the ITU Network Synchronization question (Q13/SG15), and also in the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), where he was the editor for their circuit emulation standards. Tim has over 20 years experience in the electronics and telecommunications industry, having worked in areas such as the design of embedded CPU cores for ASIC devices, and in railway signaling systems. Tim has a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds, and an MSc. from the University of Manchester. He is a Member of the IET and a Chartered Engineer.
Mike Gilson - Lead Technology Consultant, BT email»
Has played a major role in developing and implementing BT's synchronisation and timing strategy from 1988 to present day. He has represented BT on various national and international working groups and standards committees (including ETSI, ITU, PNOIG) and is currently actively contributing to ITU-T SG15 (Transport Networks, Systems & Equipment) on the synchronisation question (Q13).
Kenneth Hann - Principal Engineer, Tellabs email»
After graduating from Queens University Belfast Kenneth worked for Nokia in Finland in the area of network management and carried out technology evaluations for embedded equipment including SDH. At Tellabs he built up an integration test team which developed tools and techniques for automated regression testing of telecoms networks. He now mostly works on Tellabs synchronisation efforts which include both adaptive mechanisms, and proposals for putting synchronization back into the transport networks. He is an active participant in the ITU-T SG15/Q13 and also the IEEE1588 v2 standards sub-committee.
Helmut Imlau - Chief Engineer Timing & Synchronisation, Deutsche Telekom Technology Engineering Centre email»
Has 20 years experience in the field of transport networks along with specific synchronisation and measurement issues. Since 2002 Helmut has been responsible for synchronisation systems within Deutsche Telekom's fixed network. His current focus is on Deutsche Telekom's NGN synchronization strategy.
Sébastien Jobert - R&D Engineer, N/wk Sync., France Telecom email»
Graduated in Computer Science and Telecom from Paris 6 University, Sébastien joined France Telecom R&D in 2005, after a one year experience on VoIP aspects. He worked on Data Synchronisation aspects for one year, participating to OMA DS WG at the Open Mobile Alliance. Sébastien is currently working on Network Synchronisation aspects, and follows Q13/SG15 at the ITU-T.
Martin Kingston - Senior Designer, Orange UK email»
Has extensive experience of synchronisation in mobile networks, having worked with Orange UK for the whole of it's twelve years growth from a small simple network to it's current size and complexity. He is now responsible for the evolution of the next generation transport network architecture supporting Orange’s converged mobile, broadband and business services.
Phil Larke - Senior Engineer, T Mobile UK email»
Has been involved in the telecoms industry for 36 years, starting as an apprentice with BT working in different aspects of the business. From 1994 onwards working with various fixed / mobile operators and manufactures on all types of transmission equipment. For the last 7 years Phil has been responsible for the design, planning and deployment of synchronisation within T Mobile and played a major role in Core transmission network.
Michael Mayer - Advisor Sync. & Transport Standards, Nortel, Canada email»
Michael is a graduate of Queen's University (Kingston, Canada). In 1982 he joined Bell-Northern Research (BNR) in Ottawa where he was involved with research related to network performance. He is currently employed with Nortel Networks and is involved with research and development related to transport systems design and standardization. For the past 10 years, the focus of his standardization work as been with the ITU-T, contributing to diverse topics such as synchronization, SDH, OTN and control plane architecture. He is currently involved with ITU-T Question 13 and is the editor of G.pacmod, which begins to cover packet network synchronization from the architectural perspective.
Hugh Melvin - Lecturer, Discipline of Information Technology, National Univ. Of Ireland Galway email»
Dr. Hugh Melvin is based at National University of Ireland, Galway where his research interests include Internet Multimedia, Energy & Environmental Informatics, SmartGrid, RealTime Systems and Distributed Synchronised Time (See http://pel.it.nuigalway.ie) . Prior to this, he worked for ten years in Electrical Power Systems. He holds an MBA from University of Limerick , a research MSc from NUI Galway, and a PhD from University College Dublin.
Laurent Montini - Technical Leader, SP Architecture & Sys Dev, Cisco email»
Laurent is currently in charge of timing and time distribution aspects in packet networks in the Chief Development Office. He participates in ITU SG15Q13 and IEEE1588 workgroups. Laurent joined Cisco in January 1997 with eight years experience on local and wide area packet networks, initially as a Systems Engineer for academic and research community, working on technologies like ATM, IPv6, IP multicast, tag switching (forerunner of MPLS) or VoIP. Following this Laurent has spent the last 6 years with the CDO SPSD team, as Consulting Engineer for Mobile Service Providers on backbone and RAN transport.
David O’Connor – Managing Director, Horsebridge email»
David's career commenced with developing electronic warfare systems for Philips, designed systems for the Eurofighter before turning to the more sedate world of telecommunications, designing management systems for Ericsson. David has worked in the field of network synchronisation for the past 12 years. In 1995 he founded his first company developing software for some of the biggest names in telecommunications. He was responsible for the design and implementation of the first synchronisation platform deployed by Ericsson. He developed the original EMS systems for both Oscilloquartz and Symmetricom and also designed the first network synchronisation simulation platform. In 2001 David founded Horsebridge, which has established itself a leader in network synchronisation systems. Away from Horsebridge David loves to travel and would dearly like to have the time to complete the restoration of his first classic sports car.
Michel Ouellette – Systems Architect at Huawei Technologies email»
Michel joined Huawei in April 2009 and is currently a Systems Architect in the Technology Department of Huawei. His current research activities and responsibilities include the evolution and design of mobile backhaul networks and the development and performance analysis of new network architectures and protocols.  He also participates in the following standard bodies: ITU-T SG15/Q13, Metro Ethernet Forum and IEEE802.3-TSSG (Time Sync Study Group).  Prior to joining Huawei, Michel worked for 11 years in the CTO office and research groups at Nortel where he focused on derisking several technologies such as ATM & TDM pseudowire for mobile backhaul, Synchronous Ethernet, IEEE1588 packet clock recovery design for base stations, TCP/IP active queue management, server load balancing and ATM available bit rate algorithms. He has published more than 15 international journal/conference papers and has been granted 8 patents. Michel was the recipient of the ITSF 2005 best paper presentation.
Silvana Rodrigues –Director of System Engineering - IDT Canada email»
Silvana Rodrigues is a Director of System Engineering at Integrated Device Technology (IDT) . Silvana graduated in Electrical Engineer from Campinas University, Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1985. She started her carrier at the Telecommunication Research Center in Brazil. She worked at Zarlink (formerly Mitel Semiconductor) where she hold several positions as Analog designer, Engineering Manager and System Architect. Currently, Silvana is working in the Communications Division Group at IDT. She also participates in several standards group, being the secretary for the IEEE 1588 standards committee and the editor of the ITU-T G.8262 and ITU-T G.8263 recommendations. She is also the editor for the TICTOC requirements draft at IETF.
Hartmut Roth – Managing Director, Symmetricom GmbH email»
Hartmut graduated in Electronics from Jena University of Applied Sciences, and started his career at Friedrich Schiller University in optical research and laser ophthalmology devices. He has extensive experience in Synchronisation, Time & Frequency. He ran Engineering at Ball Efratom Germany, the place where Efratom was founded and the miniature Rubidium oscillator was invented. The main development focus was on GPS disciplined Primary Reference Systems. From 1995 Hartmut ran Marketing & Sales for Datum in Europe, and has been Director Sales for Symmetricom in Europe ME & Africa since 2002.
Stefano Ruffini - Expert R&D, Ericsson  email»
Joined Ericsson in 1993. Has been working on Synchronisation aspects for about 15 years. Has represented Ericsson in various standardisation organisations (including ETSI, ITU, 3GPP) and is currently actively contributing to ITU-T SG15 Q13 (Q13 Associated Rapporteur and editor of the G.8261 and G.8271). Is one of the Ericsson experts involved in the definition of the equipment and network synchronisation solutions.
Dominik Schneuwly - Synchronisation Consultant, Osilloquartz SA email»
Joined Oscilloquartz in 1994 as Head of R&D. He is now a consultant within the Sales & Marketing Department , where he is involved in product definition, turn-key synchronization projects and customer training. He participates in the standardisation activities on synchronization within ITU-T and ATIS. Recently he has been involved in research on real-time services over IP.
David Tonks - Principal Engineer, Semtech Ltd email»
David began his telecom career working on various projects for GPT, including their first SDH equipment. He moved to Ascom in Switzerland for a number of years, working on ATM and SDH equipment. In 1998, he returned to the UK to work for Semtech, conceiving the successful SETS design program, and is now to be found working mainly on the problem of carrying synchronisation over packet networks. He represents Semtech on the IEEE 1588 PAR working group, aiming to make 1588 suitable for telecom applications.
Marc A. Weiss - Telecom Sync and GPS expert, U.S. NIST email»
Dr. Weiss has contributed both to developing and using GPS since 1980, while working for NIST, the U.S. national time and frequency standards laboratory. He developed the NIST-ATIS Workshop on Synchronization in Telecommunications Systems in 1992, and has organized it annually since then.

New Members

The Steering Group is always on the look out for new members. Please contact any current member to discuss joining if you feel you can contribute and note our Governance Rules on membership.

Enquiries relating to the steering group should be made to:

Chris Farrow on telephone number +44 (0) 1594 862232 or by e-mail to chris.farrow@chronos.co.uk

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