Cancelled Wireless Convergence: A Panel Discussion

Wireless technology is evolving fast and furious. Proprietary cellular technologies and complex wireless digital protocols are making way to consumer buzzwords like WiFi and WiMax. How are these cellular and IP wireless technologies coming together?

On the endpoint, cellular telephones are no longer simple voice devices, nor are computers the bulky desktop IP endpoints of the past. The gadgets are rapidly morphing and converging into a slew of new technologies, keywords and features. The trends are particularly interesting in the far more mobile Asian economies, including India.

Come make sense of this crazy and exciting world - find out where we will be in the next few years, from thought leaders and decision makers. Join us for a panel discussion with representatives from all parts of the wireless ecosystem.

Program Details

The Panel

Marco Boerries, Senior Vice President, Connected Life, Yahoo! - Previously Marco founded VerdiSoft in August 2001 to pursue his vision of enabling Digital Mobility across the mobile, broadband, and home networking markets. Prior to founding VerdiSoft, Marco worked at Sun Microsystems as the Vice President and General Manager of Webtop and Application Software. In this role, Marco drove the development of the Solaris Common Desktop Environment, Netscape for Solaris, and OpenOffice.org. As the de facto open source ambassador for Sun, Marco was instrumental in introducing the GNOME project - a free and facile desktop environment for the end-user, and a powerful application framework for the developer.

Marco is also the creator of the popular StarOffice Suite. He founded Star Division at age 16, dropping out of high school to pursue his vision of creating an alternative to Microsoft software. Marco sold StarOffice to Sun Microsystems in August 1999.

Prabhat K. Dubey ("PK"), President and CEO, TelASIC Communications - PK has over 25 years of experience in senior management roles in the IC and Networking industries. Prior to TelASIC, he was a co-founder and President & CEO of Force10 Networks, a company focused on highly scalable and resilient Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches and routers. Before that, he was President and CEO of MMC Networks, a company that created the "Network Processor" category for switching/routing infrastructure equipment. PK led it to the market-leadership position and took the company public in 1997. MMC was later acquired by Applied Micro Circuits Corporation for $4.5B. Prior to MMC, PK was the Vice President and General Manager of the DSP Division at AT&T Microelectronics (now Agere). During his tenure, Lucent’s DSP division had 17X profitable growth and became the industry’s recognized leader. PK earned a Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and an MBA from The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

Prof Arogyaswami Paulraj; Professor, Electrical Department, Stanford University; CTO and co-founder, Beceem Communications -
Paulraj's career in India included development of military sonar systems (1971-82), massively parallel computers (1987-91), and the founding three national level laboratories – Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Center for Advanced Computing, and Central Research Laboratories (1986-91). Paulraj has received over a dozen national awards in India for his contributions and is a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Paulraj moved to Stanford University in 1992, and his interests has since focused on space-time wireless communications. Paulraj is the author of over 320 research papers and holds twenty five issued US patents in space-time wireless. He has authored a text book – “Introduction to Space-time Wireless Communications” published by Cambridge University Press in 2003. A new text book co-authored by him “ An Introduction to MIMO Wireless” will be published by Cambridge University Press in late 2006.

In 1999, Paulraj founded Iospan Wireless Inc – which pioneered MIMO-OFDMA fixed wireless technology and developed chip sets for fixed wireless systems. Iospan was acquired by Intel Corporation in 2002. In 2004, Paulraj co-founded Beceem Communications Inc to develop base band and RF chips sets for WIMAX 802.16e standard. Thc company has emerged as the leading supplier of Mobile WIMAX chipsets with many major clients worldwide.

Paulraj is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering where he was elected for his leadership in MIMO wireless. He received the IEEE Technical Achievement Award in 2003 and several best paper awards from the IEEE and is a Fellow of the IEEE. Paulraj currently serves on Board of Directors for 3 wireless companies and on several advisory boards of companies, universities and foundations.

David Still, Director Product Management, Bubble Motion Inc. - David is
the Director of Product Management for Bubble Motion, a technology company which develops voice applications for mobile operators. Bubble Motion delivers a mobile infrastructure platform to design, develop and deploy carrier class value-added services. Bubble Motion provides mobile operators and content developers a complete service creation and deployment environment. Bubble Motion was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Singapore, with offices in Malaysia.

Prior to joining Bubble Motion, David served as Senior Product Manager at Good Technology, where he managed Good’s Windows Mobile product lines, one of the most widely adopted Corporate mobile email products. Before Good, David managed business operations for Yahoo! Mobile, and managed acquisitions, investments, and strategic planning in Yahoo!’s Corporate Development group. David earlier worked on private and public fund-raising for Internet companies at Montgomery Securities. He received an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA from Amherst College.

(Moderator) Ojas Rege, Senior Director, Global Mobile Products, Yahoo! Inc - Ojas Rege is the senior director of global mobile products for Yahoo!, managing the development of mobile products for Yahoo!’s Connected Life business unit. His team is responsible for the product life-cycle, from strategy through deployment, of the company’s mobile consumer services and platforms.

Ojas started in the mobile industry in 2000, as vice president of product management at AvantGo, one of the pioneers of mobile consumer and enterprise content services, and headed up product development after its acquisition by Sybase in 2003. Previously, he was vice president of online gaming at Acclaim Entertainment, a major video games publisher. Ojas started his career at Oracle in 1988 and also spent several years at Boston Consulting Group, where he headed many of the firm’s major strategy projects in software, telecommunications, and healthcare.

He holds Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Computer Engineering from MIT and an MBA from Stanford University.

The Sponsors

Sequoia Capital India is India's largest and most active venture capital fund with approximately $750 million under management. The fund focuses primarily on high growth India domestic services, consumer internet, consumer wireless, and outsourced services businesses that are leaders in their market segments. Sequoia Capital India has offices in Bangalore and Silicon Valley.

Sequoia Capital's partners have worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of Network Appliance, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of nVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics and Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com

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