New board members for TCCA

The TCCA has just appointed two new board members.

Ari Toivonen and Philippe Agard join board chair Mladen Vratonjić and existing board members Ali Helenius, Airbus Defence and Space; Dr Barbara Held, BDBOS Germany; Francesco Pasquali, Leonardo; Jeppe Jepsen, Motorola Solutions; Malcolm Quelch, Sepura; and independent consultant Tero Pesonen.

Toivonen will be the TCCA board member representing the Emergency Services Mobile Communications Program (ESMCP). He is an experienced telecommunications professional who has, for more than 15 years, focused on delivering mission-critical communications, first at Nokia before moving to deliver the current Airwave system and the future Emergency Services Network in Great Britain. During these years he has provided strategic and technical guidance on various aspects of mission-critical communications landscape including security, functionality, technology roadmap, user requirements and spectrum needs.

Toivonen has taken an active role in several related national and international working groups over these years including chairing the TETRA user requirements standardisation working group for three years. Since 2010 he has worked closely with other UK government departments and spectrum regulator Ofcom on the government’s spectrum strategy and the public sector spectrum release program. Ari is the current chairman of the UK’s Public Safety Spectrum Policy Group, reporting to the UK Spectrum Strategy Committee.

Meanwhile, Agard will be the TCCA board member representing the TCCA Broadband Industry Group. He is Global Public Safety and Defence Segment Leader at Nokia, and leads a team which develops the Nokia business in this segment globally through direct customer engagements. It includes defining the market requirements, driving discussion with the business groups to define the corresponding solutions and developing the relevant partner ecosystem.

Agard has spent his entire career in the communication Industry, within Alcatel, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia. He represents Nokia at TCCA, Public Safety Communication Europe and Cyber Excellence Cluster in France. He graduated from the Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité (Supélec) in France, MSC at Imperial College (London) and a Diploma of Advanced Economic Studies (DEA) from Dauphine, Paris. In 2013 he graduated from the Armaments and Defence Economics course at Institute of Advanced Studies in National Defence (IHEDN, Paris).

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Alex

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