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Optimum Communications Services, Inc. (OCS) is a wholesale network service provider using its patented ITN technology platform to provide cost-efficient multi-protocol backbone network and broadband VPN solutions for end-user-serving communications providers, on-line service providers and information-intensive enterprises.
OCS was founded in 2005 by Mark Sandstrom, board member and president and CEO, John Pinsent, board member and consulting CFO, and Randy Thompson, board member. In addition, OCS' team includes Richard Huffman, VP of Business Development, Mark O’Shaughnessy, VP of Marketing and Sales, and advisory board members Mike Scullin, Abhay Dubey and Bhaskar Thyagarajan. The team bios are provided below.
Management and Directors:
Mark Sandstrom
President and CEO, Member of the Board of Directors
Prior to founding OCS and leading the development of OCS' ITN technology platform, Mr. Sandstrom worked at various R&D capacities for communications system vendors in North America and Europe since 1995, for established companies such as Tellabs, Inc. as well as startups including Cyras Systems, Inc. (acquired by CIENA Corp. in 2001). He holds several issued and pending US and international patents on the innovative techniques enabling the groundbreaking efficiency of the self-optimizing Adaptive-Mesh network architecture OCS' ITN solution. Mr. Sandstrom holds an MSEE degree from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and an Executive MBA degree from Golden Gate University, San Francisco.
Email: mark at optimumzone.net
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Richard Huffman
Vice President, Business Development
With over twenty years of international experience in the telecommunications industry, Mr. Huffman brings a wealth of knowledge and leadership to OCS in the areas of business development, marketing and service provider network design and engineering. Having worked for various communications service providers, system and software vendors, Mr. Huffman's comprehensive background provides him with extensive insight, knowledge and understanding of the global telecommunications industry. His positions over his career have included various senior management, marketing and engineering roles with high-tech start-ups and established firms such as TierOne OSS Technologies, Syndesis, Cisco Systems, PipeLinks (acquired by Cisco in 1998), TCSI and Fujitsu Network Communications, as well as MTS Allstream, Telstra and Bell Canada. Mr. Huffman holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Lakehead University. He is based in Toronto.
Email: richard at optimumzone.net
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Mark P. O’Shaughnessy
Vice President, Marketing and Sales
Mr. O’Shaughnessy brings to OCS two decades of market and channels development experience in telecom and IT industries. His extensive experience in the field includes senior manager to executive director level roles held at AT&T Corporation and Concert Communications from 1995 to 2007, in areas of strategic partnerships, corporate client solutions development, new product and project management, and before that as an IT and management consultant for several Fortune 500 technology companies, including AT&T, Citibank and Hewlett-Packard, developing new joint services and distribution channels to increase partnership revenues. Most recently at AT&T, he managed the company’s system integrator partnerships, including with IBM, HP, Accenture and EDS. Mr. O’Shaughnessy utilizes his extensive expertise and network of contacts with leading global technology businesses to effectively bring OCS’ advanced service provider and corporate network solutions to the markets. He is based in New York City.
Email: mos at optimumzone.net
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John Pinsent
Consulting CFO, Member of the Board of Directors
Mr. Pinsent is a founding Senior Associate with St. Arnaud Pinsent & Associates, Chartered Accountants (SA&P), where he specializes in the provision of audit, accounting, tax and business advisory services for startup and growth stage businesses. Prior to co-founding SA&P, Mr. Pinsent was a Director of Technology, Communication and Entertainment assurance services for Northern Alberta with Ernst & Young. His special area of emphasis since late '90s has been hi-tech ventures. From 1999 to 2004, he served as the Steering Committee Chairman and co-author of Ernst & Young's annual Alberta Technology Report. He has served as a director on a number of boards including Info Tech Alberta (Treasurer & Chairman), the Audit Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta (ICAA) and the Steering Committee of Economic Development Edmonton's Deal Generator initiative. Mr. Pinsent is currently a director on the boards of Liberty Mines Inc., a TSX listed company, and of Synodon Inc. and Innovotech Inc., both listed on the TSX.V exchange. In addition, Mr. Pinsent has played a key role in the creation of various hi-tech financing forums across Alberta including the Banff Venture Forum, Alberta's Innovation and Investment Week and the Alberta Venture Channel (AVC). He currently serves as a Director of AVC, as well as of a number of emerging private and public technology companies. He was awarded the ICAA Distinguished Service Award in 2006 for his support of the high technology community in Alberta, the ICAA Early Achievement Award in 2001, and the Economic Development Edmonton Ambassador Award in 2002 for his formation work on the Greater Edmonton Competitiveness Strategy. Mr. Pinsent holds BEd and BComm degrees from University of Alberta, and received his Chartered Accountant designation in 1996 while in public practice with Ernst & Young.
Email: john at optimumzone.net
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R. Stewart (Randy) Thompson
Member of the Board of Directors
Mr. Thompson has been active in the hi-tech venture space since 1992 when he started the first ISP in Alberta, (Alberta Supernet Inc., later on acquired by Norsat Communications), as well as a digital media distribution and production company. In 1999 he began developing angel investor groups in Alberta, starting with an organization that matched deals for Western Canada investors on the Internet. Since that time, he led a team that started Deal Generator, an Edmonton based angel group, and in 2003 he started Keiretsu Forum Calgary, an internationally affiliated angel group with over 400 accredited investors. Currently the group is run as VentureAlberta, which has funded over 25 start ups since 2003. During this time he also began to work as a Venture Capital Advisor to the Province of Alberta, introducing Alberta as an investment region to institutional venture investors in the USA, Europe and Asia. In March 2007, Mr. Thompson parlayed his angel experience into a new role, becoming General Partner in a new cross border Venture Fund, Argon Venture Partners. With General Partners in both Silicon Valley and in Western Canada, the fund is uniquely positioned to allow its portfolio companies utilize the often complementary resources and opportunities across these regions. Mr. Thompson currently serves on the board of directors of four angel or venture funded information and communications technology (ICT) companies. Earlier in his career Randy served as the Executive Assistant for the Minister of Technology for the Province of Alberta, serving on a committee that privatized AGT, forming Telus Corporation, now a publicly traded major telecom service provider in Canada, as well as in a working group that started the High Performance Computing Centre, a private supercomputing facility in Calgary. Mr. Thompson has sat on two public company boards, eight private company boards, as well as on a number of public policy boards including the Banff New Media Advisory committee, the National New Media Advisory Committee for the Canadian Conference of the Arts (Ottawa), and the Alberta Minister of Innovation ICT Committee.
Email: randy at optimumzone.net
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Advisors:
Michael Scullin
Advisor, Corporate Development
Mr. Scullin is a seasoned technology strategist, business developer, consultant and regulatory policy expert with over 25 years experience. He has consulted to C-level telecommunications executives, been VP of R&D for the broadband startup Xiocom Wireless, VP of Business Development & Government Affairs for the Wi-Fi startup Vivato, VP of Business Development and R&D for the publicly traded network equipment manufacturer Xircom (acquired by Intel) and spent seven years as an operations, business strategist and government affairs executive with the world’s largest carrier, Vodafone AirTouch. Mr. Scullin has also been a patent practitioner, consulted for Booz-Allen & Hamilton and served as a Submarine Officer with the U.S. Navy. He has been a member of the Board at the Wireless Communications Association International (WCA), is a member of the Federal Communications Bar Association (FCBA) and is periodic speaker, panelist and moderator at various technology fora. Mr. Scullin received his JD from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, MEA from the George Washington University and BS from the United States Naval Academy. He is based in McLean, Virginia.
Email: mike at optimumzone.net
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Abhay Dubey
Advisor, Technology and Market Strategy
Mr. Dubey, a high-technology executive, is involved in advising startups and growth-stage companies in the Internet, telecom, wireless and streaming and interactive media domains. He focuses on strategy, business and product development, and venture capital and corporate investments. He is actively involved with companies in helping formulate cross border subsidiary and international expansions strategies. Most recently, Mr. Dubey was VP and GM at Verismo Networks, an IPTV company. At Verismo, he worked with the R&D, marketing and sales teams to develop and bring to market a next generation platform to deliver interactive multi-media to the lean-back experience of the TV. Prior to that Mr. Dubey was VP of Sales & GM International at Speedera Networks, a Content Delivery Network (CDN) company acquired by Akamai in 2005. As one of the early employees and part of the executive team, during his tenure, Speedera was named by Deloitte as a "Top 25 Rising Star" on their national technology Fast 500 companies list, and as one of the "Top 10 Fastest Growing Private Companies in Silicon Valley" for three years running. Managing business development, customer relations and sales engineering, Mr. Dubey was key to growing Speedera’s annual revenues to a run rate of $60M. Prior to Speedera, he served at Verecomm and Frequency Technology (now Sequence Design) in general management and sales roles. He began his hi-tech career in the semiconductor and EDA industry working on digital and analog microchips and design tools. Mr. Dubey has MSEE and BSEE degrees, respectively, from Colorado State University and Indian Institute of Technology - Roorkee. He is based in Cupertino, California.
Email: abhay at optimumzone.net
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Bhaskar Thyagarajan
Advisor, Global Business Development
With over twenty years of international experience in the telecommunications industry, Mr. Thyagarajan brings strong knowledge and leadership to OCS in the fields of business development, marketing, sales, network planning, partnership and product development. From 1988 through 2005 at Sprint and Global One, Mr. Thyagarajan held a variety of progressively senior leadership roles in the areas of network planning and wholesale customer sales and business development that provided him extensive insight into the global network service provider industry. In his latest assignment at Sprint, he headed the company’s EMEA/Asia/India operations where he built successful strategic partnerships with national and international network operators for expanding Sprint’s global IP network platform. Following his 18 years at Sprint, Mr. Thyagarajan joined FLAG Telecom (now part of Reliance Globalcom) as VP Marketing & Product Management of data services, where he led the company's transformational effort to become an enterprise value added data solution provider from being a wholesale carrier. In 2007 he became the company’s VP Channel Development - North America, leading the development of Reliance’s channel program for marketing enterprise network services through regional carriers and system integrators. Mr. Thyagarajan is currently an advisor to a number of networking and IT startups in the areas of global telecom business development, channel partnerships and market entry strategies. Mr. Thyagarajan holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, a Master of Technology degree in Industrial Management from the Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur, and an MBA from The Henry W. Bloch School of Business at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
Email: bhaskar at optimumzone.net
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