Summary
James Bird has 20 years industry experience, initially in engineering and recently in marketing and sales, providing a valuable combination of practical and holistic knowledge as shown by numerous papers presented at commercial business conferences. His knowledge of the telecommunications business and particularly the emerging field of competitive licensed operators in Europe is both broad and comprehensive. He has moved recently into consultancy. Most recently his role has been managing the European sales team within Nortel's Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) group, responsible for a '99 sales budget of $16m (US).

Present Position, Commenced July '99
Business Consultant, Telecomms deregulation
Responsibilities Developing and contributing to the construction of business cases used by various operators involved in the investigation and application of telco licences in Europe. Providing technical 'due diligence' to financial institutions involved in the funding of start up operators in the market.

Previous Employment - Sept. '98 to July '99
Sales and Marketing Director - Europe
Responsibilities Sales and orders responsibility for Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) in Europe (on target to over achieve $16m '99 budget). The role has included the building and recruitment of a team of both sales and sales support staff to meet the budget. The role was created following the major restructuring of the FWA division, and has involved development of new routes to market, as well as forming new work practices with other groups with in Nortel. Responsibilities have included the setting and monitoring of the budget within the global organisation as well as the motivation and target setting for the staff within the group. Sales and order forecasts as well as cash flow, margin analysis and operating expense monitoring and control have been within the responsibility of the role. As the one year mark approaches, an active motivated team has been built to ensure the business can grow substantially next year.

Jan. '97 to Sept. '98
Business Development Manager - Western Europe
Responsibilities Development of opportunities with New Licensed Operators (NLOs) around Western Europe for the deployment of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) networks. This work involves the support of these NLOs at various levels, from the creation of the business case via the development of a business model to the selection of suitable technology solutions. Expertise in areas such as Financial risk assessment, licence and regulatory affairs, interconnect negotiation and technology selection has been built up. To provide this service to the Nortel country organisations, I've been responsible for a small team of business planners who have built up a combination of financial tools and empirical knowledge covering the key areas of risk and exposure experienced by companies embarking on the route to gaining an NLO telecommunications licence in the deregulating EU market.

Jan. '96 to Jan. '97
Marketing manager - FWA
Responsibilities Strategic positioning and marketing of the Proximity FWA products in the deregulating European fixed wireless access market. Recruited and run a small team, who provided the interface between the customer facing account teams and the lines of business who provide the product.

June '95 to Dec. '95:
Product marketing manager
Responsibilities Development of the European market for Proximity L, one of Nortel's fixed wireless access products. Evaluating and prioritising the likely opportunities for the product and providing direct support to the account teams responsible for bringing in those sales. In a team of just 2 in Europe, I had responsibility for ensuring the formal processes need to start a new business were in place as well as running the A/B form process for the bids.

Jan. '94 - May '95:
Channel Development
Responsibilities: Development of new channels, distributors and territories in preparation for importation of cordless PBX (COMPANION) products. Working with distributors to prepare them for sales and marketing actively associated with the introduction of the new products.

July '91 - Jan. '94:
Product Manager, PCS
Responsibilities: Prime interface between the engineering function (BNR) and the market development team. Support of existing COMPANION product and specification of new product (DECT) and MCMO.

Sept. '90 - June '91:
Program Manager CT2 Developments.
Responsibilities: Managing a team of six engineers, developing applications based on the primary CT2 products that STC were developing for BT. This work split into two projects:- i. A development of telepoint equipment for the French Pointel network on behalf of SAT ii. A proposal to BNR Canada for the trial of CT2 plus.

Engineering responsibility over hardware, software and budget control for the STC half of a joint development with SAT. Interface between two sets of customers, the internal commercial group at STC and the external group in the form of SAT's engineering program manager. Spend of £100k managed over the first six months of the program. Second half of the time involved developing a 'crash' program to demonstrate CT2 plus to the Canadian authorities, (this option was not taken up by Ottawa as they were assured that Motorola could do the work in a tighter time scale than STC (this then slipped by six months and came out five months longer than our original plan).

Nov. '87 - Aug. '90:
Program Engineer CT2 Program, STC.
Responsibilities: System design and integration for the Nested 6 base product. This product was one of a range being engineered by STC under a development agreement for BT. The work consisted of hardware responsibility for the design and co-ordination of the other aspects needed to develop a working product (PCB layout, Radio design, audio integration etc.).

'83-Nov. '87:
Development Engineer, Radio Paging Development STC.
Responsibilities: Various engineering responsibilities within the pager development group at STC including production support at the factory in Northern Ireland.

'80-'83:
Engineering Technician, Audio Products STC.
Responsibilities: Low level design and testing of systems and developments in the consumer products division of STC. Starting as a tester of push-button phones, and moving up to real engineering work leaving the test side behind.