About InterConnect

Our People

Richard Jacowleff (Chairman)

Richard Jacowleff is Chairman of InterConnect Communications and President of Telcordia's Interconnection Solutions group. He provides the overall leadership and business strategy for InterConnect's services to continue to assist regulators and service providers create open and competitive markets. As a recognised leader in the industry, Mr. Jacowleff has more than 25 years of experience in the communications market assisting customers with business transformation to address competition and trading partner collaboration.

Richard received Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Computer Science from New York Institute of Technology in New York and Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey respectively.

Suresh Subramanian (Managing Director)

Suresh is Managing Director of InterConnect Communications. He leads the company's strategic planning and execution, through the diligent establishment and management of working relationships with regulators, service providers and partners globally. Suresh has served as a valued advisor to senior executives on the most appropriate strategies required by organisations to embrace regulatory, market, and technology initiatives.

Previously, Suresh spent over 20 years at Telcordia where he most recently was a Senior Vice-President leading Global Sales with a focus on interconnection solutions and numbering. He also ran a multi-million dollar global practice that provided expert-based solutions covering strategy, people, process and technology for the integrated communication marketplace, and spearheaded the company’s international expansion including the successful acquisition of InterConnect Communications.

Suresh has Ph.D. (1988) and Masters (1986) degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelors degree (1984) in the same discipline from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Eric Tyson (Director, Commercial Services)

Eric has worked in the telecommunications industry for 25 years, initially with BT dealing with equipment approvals, international affairs and market deregulation before joining InterConnect Communications as a senior consultant in 1995. Since then, Eric has worked extensively throughout Europe (in particular Central and Eastern Europe), Africa and the Middle East. He has broad experience of working with fixed and mobile operators, as well as regulators and ministries, advising on general regulation and specifically on cost allocation, interconnection, local loop unbundling and international benchmarking.

Eric is a regular presenter at industry conferences and often chairs conference proceedings. He speaks on a broad range of regulatory topics and specialises in interconnection and cost allocation. He holds a BSc. (Hons) Degree in Chemistry from the University of Durham (Hatfield College).

Alan Turner (Finance Director)

Alan joined InterConnect as Financial Director and Company Secretary in 1999 and is responsible for all aspects of finance, information technology and company administration.

Before joining InterConnect, Alan spent six years with the healthcare division of Compass Group, latterly as corporate commercial manager. Before that, he was with Stoy Hayward, initially in Toronto and then in London, specialising in corporate finance.

Alan holds a Bachelor of Accountancy degree from Glasgow University and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG in 1986.

Hugh Collins (Director)

Hugh has 35 years experience in the telecoms sector. His early roles (with BT for example) focused on strategic planning and market analysis and this focus has remained central to much of the consulting work he has undertaken since. In addition to leading a number of major regulatory development projects in Europe and the Middle East, his recent work has covered 3G licensing, licence bid preparation, regulatory and commercial due diligence, interconnect pricing, the development of mobile cellular policy and universal funding.

Prior to joining InterConnect in 2003, Hugh managed his own regulatory consulting business in Europe and Asia-Pacific for 8 years and worked for Booz Allen prior to that where he was responsible for building up the communications industry practice team in the London office and in the Asia Pacific region. Hugh has a BA Honours degree in Mechanical Sciences (Electronics) and an MA in Management Studies, both from Cambridge University.

Les Oliver (Senior Consultant)

Les is a member of InterConnect’s Commercial Services team, and is closely involved in advising regulators and operators on a range of numbering matters, including number plans and number portability.

Les has worked in the telecommunications industry for over 35 years, initially with BT where he fulfilled a variety of roles, latterly as Product Manager in the Wholesale Equal Access Team with individual responsibility for Non-Geographic Number Portability, Carrier Pre-Selection and Local Loop Unbundling. In addition to leading the teams developing all aspects of these services, Les also represented BT on UK industry forums and worked with industry teams and the UK regulatory authorities in developing the relevant technical, process and commercial parameters for these products.

Mark McFadden (Principal Consultant, IP Naming and Addressing)

Mark is a specialist in global Internet addressing and naming. For five years, Mark was the Senior Strategist for Internet Naming and Addressing Policy at BT. With more than 20 years of operational and policy experience with IP addressing he has extensive experience in large-scale internetworking. He is an active contributor to work in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and ICANN, and he is involved in the development of global internet addressing standards and policies.

He is also a regular contributor to the work of the Regional Internet Registries, including serving as the Chair of the Address Supporting Organization. Prior to working for BT, Mark taught in the Computer Science program at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

John Pendle (Senior Consultant, Numbering)

John has worked in the telecommunications industry for 37 years and was the Numbering Programme Manager for BT in the UK from 1996 to 2000. During this period, he led the BT team charged with implementing the UK National Code and Number Change in 2000. This included conceiving and leading the network industry team to manage the number change publicity and technical changes. John played a major role in ensuring that the regulatory focus included corporate numbers and short access codes. During this period, he created and implemented BT Number Portability products and also advised members of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Carrier Pre-Selection Working Group on the commercial impact of the service.

John's work as a consultant has included advising operators and regulators in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, the Lebanon, Romania, Saudi Arabia, the Isle of Man, the Bahamas, Gibraltar and Poland on matters relating to the development and administration of national numbering plans and policy and number portability.

John is a member of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals.

Tony Holmes (Senior Consultant, Naming and Addressing)

Tony worked with British Telecom for over 30 years and led its Numbering, Naming and Addressing Policy and Strategy team. He has also held a number of key positions in relevant International forums including the ETSI Group responsible for Numbering, Addressing and Routeing (which he has chaired for over 10 years) and a number of rapporteurships on key numbering projects in ITU-T Study Group 2.

Over the past 5 years Tony has focused on key technology changes and the move towards IP-based networks, leading the numbering, addressing and identification work within ETSI TISPAN as well as participating in the various Regional Internet Registry debates on IPv4 and IPv6 addressing. He was elected as Chairman of the ISP and Connectivity Providers Constituency of ICANN and represented that group on the council responsible for policy development of the internet’s generic name space.

Steve Morgan (Senior Consultant)

Steve is a member of InterConnect’s Commercial Services team, specialising in access, interconnection and network planning issues. Since joining the InterConnect team, Steve has worked on a wide variety of projects in the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Far East involving the planning and operations of telecommunications networks. Areas of work undertaken have included the provision of xDSL technologies, network and customer infrastructure strategic and detailed planning, technical due diligence assessments, strategic deployment and management of operator-independent open access networks.

Steve has also advised clients on issues relating to the impact of telecommunications on economic regeneration, the development of processes and procedures, network planning/operational performance and Quality of Service, Local Loop Unbundling network operation including collocation/distant location issues, and technical and operational issues around the deployment of open access Fibre to the Cabinet and Fibre to the Home Next Generation Access networks.

Catherine Joyce (Senior Consultant)

Catherine is a member of InterConnect’s Commercial Services team, and is closely involved in developing cost allocation models and tariff strategies to help incumbents and competing operators to better understand their costs, as well as assisting regulators to determine interconnection policy and charges.

Before joining InterConnect, Catherine was a Senior Consultant with Cable and Wireless Communications, where she was responsible for interconnect cost research and analysis, traffic analysis and modelling and the development of interconnect strategies. Catherine has a Master’s Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Leo Borwick (Senior Consultant, Interconnection)

Leo has worked in a variety of senior roles in the telecommunications industry for over 20 years, specialising in business modelling, pricing, regulatory policy and strategy. He has worked with fixed and mobile operators, ISPs, equipment suppliers and regulators in the UK, Europe, Africa and South East Asia.

Leo's recent work has focused on LRIC cost analysis, pricing strategy and price cap reviews. Recent assignments have included building LRIC cost models of fixed and mobile operators, assisting an industry body with developing a consensus on NGN interconnection, and assisting the UK regulator, Ofcom, with their review of the future of mobile termination charges.

Jeremy Turk (Senior Consultant, Economic Regulation)

Jeremy Turk is an economist and strategist with some 20 years’ experience in telecommunications. After working for the Bank of England, Shell International and in academia, he was Manager of Regulatory Economics and Head of Strategic Economics at BT; whilst at BT he had close involvement with BT’s contribution to the Monopolies and Merger Commission investigation of fixed number portability and with Ofcom’s Strategic Review.

He was for several years Special Economic Advisor to the General Director of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Bahrain. He has taught and lectured on telecommunications regulation and economics and also acted as a consultant in telecommunications and more generally in the sphere for regional economic development. Jeremy also leads InterConnect's Economic Regulation Master Class.

Siow Meng Soh (Senior Consultant, Spectrum)

Siow Meng has 14 years of experience in telecommunications and spectrum management, and was formerly a spectrum manager at the Singapore regulator. He was responsible for spectrum planning, frequency assignment, development of the Radio Spectrum Master Plan for Singapore, cross-border coordination, as well as the coordination of frequency usage of government bodies such as the public protection agencies, land transport authority, civil aviation authority, maritime port authority and broadcasting authority.

Additionally, he has completed for NRAs in the Middle East several detailed reports and consultation documents in spectrum pricing, spectrum policy for the UHF and SHF bands, liberalisation of the 2G bands in 900 and 1800MHz, and determination of spectrum requirements for mobile operators using software modelling.

Mark Jarvis (Senior Consultant, Spectrum)

Mark is a professionally qualified engineer with extensive experience providing telecoms consultancy services, planning, procurement, and project and programme management for a number of major telecommunications operators and utilities worldwide. Mark has assisted networks launching in South Africa, UAE, Eygpt, Oman, Sweden and Switzerland.

Mark’s technology experience spans WiMAX, 2G, 3G and PMR network deployments. He is experienced in operating at senior management level, leading major operators' business launches, network deployment, procurement and outsourcing programmes. Mark has a Bachelors degree in Electronic Communications from the University of Salford, and he is a Chartered Engineer and a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Brian Aitken (Business Development Executive)

Brian has been with InterConnect for almost ten years during which time he has worked on corporate roles involving lead generation, proposal management and support for specific corporate marketing and project activities. His primary responsibility continues to be on lead generation and proposal management however he is also responsible for the overall management of InterConnect's TRMC courses.

Prior to joining InterConnect in 2000, Brian was an Account Manager with British Steel, working on well-known multinational accounts in the automotive sector before moving on to similar account management roles supplying into the electronics sector. Brian holds an MA Hons Degree, a Post Graduate Diploma in European Marketing and Languages and a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing with whom he remains a Full Member.

Theresa French (Project Co-ordinator)

Theresa joined InterConnect in September 1997 as an approvals assistant in the Certification and Type Approvals department, a role which often developed into a full project management role for multi country / multi product type approval projects.

Theresa now assists in the co-ordination of all the company's consulting projects, assisting consultants to ensure client requirements are met in full. This involves managing international travel requirements, budget review and client invoicing in addition to general support for project reporting.

Theresa is also responsible for the day-to-day co-ordination of the TRMC courses, including delegate enquiries and registrations and liaising with the training venue.