IoT Roundtable Breakfast - Jan 18

Description

The next industrial revolution over private LTE networks

Speaker:  Dr. Solyman Ashrafi, Managing Partner, NxGen Partners

As machine-to-machine communication moves from sensors talking with sensors to more fully autonomous systems like the connected car, the IoT industry is turning to private LTE networks to improve productivity and reliability of their networks. This presentation will provide information on:

• New trends and connectivity requirements
• Public versus private LTE networks
• The dedicated, optimized and high-performance LTE Networks are now available to corporations of all sizes
• IoT, massive IoT and industrial IoT
• Recent news and advances
• New wide band CBRS Spectrum available for all

About the speaker:
Solyman Ashrafi was SVP of technology at metroPCS and has been a technology entrepreneur with over 25 years technology/product development expertise. After the merger of metroPCS with T-Mobile, Solyman and Roger Linquist (founder and chairman of metroPCS) launched a technology investment firm in 2013. Since then, Solyman has been incubating several companies that use millimeter waves for fixed wireless access and backhaul, fiber laterals, small cell towers, massive MIMO, CBRS, 5G and data centers. His investment thesis is to stand up technologies on real assets (fiber, poles, towers…) to expand capacity of networks. The technologies include advanced temporal, spatial and new diversity techniques to increase spectral efficiency in both fiber, cable, twisted pair and wireless. It also includes CORD, ONAP, NFV/SDN based solutions leveraging over 70 of his patents and 78 refereed publications.
At metroPCS, Solyman was leading the development of the first LTE network in the world. He was also leading the social, messaging, digital media (music & video), financial services, advertising, and VoLTE/Rich Communications Services (RCS) product teams. He was responsible for all product partnerships with telecom operators, internet companies, advertising agencies, video/music content providers, search companies, App developers and OTTs.   He was also the lead on combining social and telephony graphs to achieve improved User Experience (UX) and advertising. At metroPCS, Solyman was also driving a coherent portfolio of products/services with optimal distribution of investments in each. Prior to metroPCS, he designed and built telecom networks for major operators in the U.S. and Europe and held executive positions at LCC, Nortel, Computer Sciences Corporation and Ericsson. During his career, Solyman raised money from multiple funds and launched several venture-backed companies in software, technology and cloud-based applications. Solyman was the stakeholder Board member of an incubator for Nortel in 1997 and an accelerator for Ericsson in 1999 for their investment on new technology companies. He also worked closely with Roger Linquist in the 2013 merger of metroPCS with T-Mobile. Solyman received a Ph.D. in Applied Physics, a MEE in Communications Eng., a MSC in Wave Propagation and a BEE degree in Electrical Eng.
In 2013 after the merger of metroPCS, Solyman and Roger founded a stealth 5G technology accelerator for development of advanced technologies in Millimeter Waves, Mobile Edge Computing, SDN/NFV under 5G umbrella for applications in Fronthaul, Backhaul and wireless access and is currently investing and incubating in new companies. He is also on the EE advisory board of SMU in Dallas.