Speaker Biographies:
Dr Ahmed Abbas Sindi
Dr. Sindi is the Chief Executive Officer of the Etihad Atheeb Telecommunication Company. He was formerly CEO of Makkah Telecom where he established and led a consrtium of investors that partnered with China Telecom to bid for the 2nd Fixed Telephony Licene in the Kingdom. He led an M&A team identifying and pursuiing convergent telecom licenses in the EMEA region and the company was the largest VSAT operator in the Middle East
Prior to this, Dr. Sindi was Deputy Governor, IT in the Kingom’s telecommunications regulator – the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC). In this role he was a member of many ministerial committees representing CITC and the Ministry of CIT in local, regional and International For a and was the coordinator for the ministerial committee preparing for the World summit on Information Society in 2003-5.
He designed and implemented major IT readiness programs in CITC that developed its IT capacity, systems and man power from scratch to its world class level today.
Before the CITC, Dr Sindi was General Manager for Saudi Globalastar Operations Co. (Paid up capital 96,000,000 SAR, - a 250 Million SAR telecom project) - the first private telecoms operator fully licensed in Saudi Arabia. His acievements included building up, commissioning and launching the service of Globalstar satellite services in Saudi Arabia, on time and under-budget. This was in spite of serious obstacles from regulatory issues and technical hurdles. The services included Buillin systems, pre-paid platforms and CRM. He negotiated and signed the first fully fledged Interconnection Agreement as well as the first local roaming agreement for mobile operators in KSA signed by a private telecom operator in Saudi Arabia with the Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC)
Prior to this, Dr Sindi held roles as Director of Corporate Development and then General Manger responsible for turning around the largest plants in the Banawi industrial Group.
He was Chairman for 12 years of Orbit GmbH in Germany. This company delivers software to leading clients including Lufthansa, Deutsch Bank and the German government.
Dr Sindi holds a B.S.E. (Bachlour of Science in Engineering) from the King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah as well as a M.S.E. (Masters of Science in Engineering) and a Ph.D in Industrial and Operations Engineering from The University of Michigan.