Bond Wireless
What led you into the wireless business?
I was an associate dean of IT at Bond University in Australia and I got
frustrated with my fellow academics who were enthusiastic in conducting
pure research but not in developing marketable products, which was
unfortunate, since neither government nor industry would finance
development without the possibility of commercial return.
So in 1992, I established Bond Wireless together with a graduate
student to develop an SMS solution for a transport company wanting to
alert commuters about train delays.
You have products like
Campaign Messenger, SMS Print, SecureTrans, Greetings2Phone and
Telemetry and Vehicle tracking and many others. What are the most
popular of your applications worldwide and why?
It's Campaign Messenger, which lets people send bulk SMS messages,
easily, instantly and securely from their PC over the Internet to our
SMS gateway in Australia which then sends them on to recipients
anywhere in the world.
It was one of the first Microsoft .NET certified applications available worldwide when we launched it in 2003.
What is your current focus?
We're
marketing our SMS Gateway platform and are looking at franchising our
business model for companies wanting to get into providing SMS and VoIP
services. For example our Text to Speech application lets you send an
SMS to our server, which converts it to speech, calls the recipient's
number anywhere in the world and reads it out to them in various
languages, including English with UK, Indian, Australian or American
accents.
To how many countries and through how many operators do you supply your services?
Our services are available over 500 networks in 150 countries and we have direct 55 carriers and content aggregators worldwide.
What are the most
exciting and promising of all these applications overall and which of
them do you expect to be the most promising and exciting over the next
three to five years?
It's our patented SecureTrans (SMS Authenticated and Verifiable) secure
SMS solution which provides non-repudiateable proof of receipt, which
is important in mobile-commerce. It's already used in Australia to
notify HIV patients of their medical results and high school students
of their government exam results.
Do you travel a lot in
course with your business, how extensive are your travels, what do you
do while travelling and what do you enjoy most about the people,
culture, cuisine and so on during your business travels?
Besides regularly coming to Malaysia on business and family matters, I
regularly travel on business to Germany, Dubai, the US, China and to
South-East Asia, and I've attended international exhibitions and trade
shows like CeBIT in Hanover and Sydney, CTIA in the US, CommunicAsia in
Singapore and the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes.
I love meeting different people, enjoy cultures and different food and
unique culinary cultures like cobra in China, German sausages, elpollo
loco chicken in California, escargot in France and of course satay in
Malaysia.
Wow! You surely are a connoisseur. What,s your favourite food then?
Satay. I was the satay champion while at Citibank when I ate 86 sticks in under 20 minutes.
Where were you born? Can you tell us a bit about your early days?
I was born in Klang and attended LaSalle School there, where I was one
of the top students and was a Selangor state swimmer. I studied
electrical engineering at the University of Southern California
specialising in computing and completed a dual masters, namely an MBA
in Finance and a Masters of Science in Industrial and System
Engineering in Robotics.
I then joined Citibank in New York and was among 14 people selected
to join its North American Investment Banking Associate Programme and
was transferred back here for three years.
I got a full scholarship at Bond University to do a PhD in artificial
neural network applications in finance and was chair of the Australian
Computer Society (ACS), Gold Coast Chapter for some years and was made
a fellow.
I still maintain contact with the university and was made an adjunct
professor at Bond and Griffith universities on the Gold Coast.
Besides work, what are your other professional or industry-related activities?
I'm involved in the Angels Institute in Australia, which brings
experienced professionals to assist technology, health, manufacturing,
alternative energy and ICT startups. I'm also involved in the ACS
Foundation which provides scholarships to ICT students and industry
collaboration.
What do you like doing during your leisure time, what hobbies, sports, interests and family activities?
Playing computer games, badminton, ping pong and chess with my children.
What mobile phone or phones do you currently use and what is your dream phone or device?
The
Nokia E70, since its WiFi feature lets me make quality VoIP calls via
Bond Wireless server. My dream phone is one running all of Bond
Wireless applications enabling people to make cheap, if not free phone
calls and SMS.
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