Announcing the creation of AACS Ltd – A specialist firm set up to advise on ICT regulation and competition issues

Athens & Nicosia, December 20, 2006: The creation of AACS Ltd (www.AACSconsulting.eu), a new specialist consulting company in the area of Information, Communications, and Technology (ICT), was announced today.

A new multi-disciplinary team has come together to offer specialist advice to government entities, such as regulators and ministries, as well as to private enterprises, including telecommunications operators, broadcasters, and internet service providers (ISPs), in the areas of competition and regulation in the ICT sector.

AACS Ltd, whose services include support in litigation and arbitration, advice in negotiating and reviewing interconnection agreements, company compliance reviews and compliance programme planning, competition and regulatory investigations, and policy advice, is supported by well-established experts in the field.

The team that underpins AACS’s strength includes:
• Andreas Avgousti, a lawyer, whose previous posts include that of the General Director of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Bahrain (TRA), Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs of a new fixed telephony entrant in Greece, Senior Consultant to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Hong Kong (OFTA) and the Television and Licensing Authority of Hong Kong (TELA), ag. Director of Competition and Fair Trading in OFTEL, now OFCOM.

• Prof. Martin Cave, an economist, Professor and Director of the Centre for Management under Regulation, Warwick Business School specialising in regulatory economics. He is the author of the Independent Review of Spectrum Management (2002) for the UK Government, co-author of Understanding Regulation (1999) and co-editor of the Handbook of Telecommunications Economics Vol. 1 (2002) and Vol. 2 (2005), and author of many articles in journals. As well as his academic work he has also undertaken studies for the European Commission and advised regulatory agencies. He was a member of the UK Competition Commission from 1996 to 2002. He has advised the European Commission on broadband and international roaming issues, and assists telecommunications regulatory agencies in the UK, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and Singapore. He is responsible for two studies of spectrum management carried out for the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK. He has advised the OECD, especially on telecommunications reform in Eastern and Central Europe. He is president of ThinkTel, an international think tank on telecommunications based in Milan.

• Peter Walker, an engineer, spent 22 years in British Telecom in a range of senior management posts related to network engineering and then moved to OFTEL, now OFCOM, where he served as Director of Technology for the period 1993-2003. He specializes in telecommunications technology, including issues such as numbering and number portability, interconnection, broadband access, network resilience, and the impact of regulation on new technologies such as VoIP and Next Generation Networks. In some of his recent projects, he advised the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology in Jordan on their 2003 Policy Statement, the Peruvian Ministry of Transportation and Communications on number portability and the Regulatory Authority of Saudi Arabia on local loop unbundling and wholesale broadband access products.

• Mark Donnelly, an economist. Mark was a Director in the Economic Consulting Practice as well as the cross-practice Technology, Media and Telecommunications Industry (TMT) Team of Deloitte & Touche LLP. Prior to that, Mark was a Director at Arthur Andersen and was head of Andersen’s Regulatory Strategy service line initiative across Europe.
• Dimitris Dimitropoulos, an engineer, who served as a member of the Greek National Telecommunications and Post Regulator (EETT) in 1996, and from 1997 until 2005 was Vice President of EETT responsible for telecommunications. During his tenure he oversaw the full liberalization of the Greek telecommunications market and its alignment with EU legislation and regulations.
• Dr Alkis Psarras, a lawyer who has served as head of the legal department of the Greek National Telecommunications and Post Regulator (EETT) and participated in the drafting of the existing Telecommunications Law and the new Electronic Communications Law. He has also served as a Member of the Board of Directors of the EETT.
The team also includes Dr. Chris Doyle, an economist, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Management under Regulation, Warwick Business School and Associate Fellow at the Department of Economics, University of Warwick; Jonathan Kingan, an engineer, whose previous posts include the telecoms strategy practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers and PA Consulting; Michail Tsagatakis, a lawyer, who for the past ten years has headed the legal and regulatory department of an alternative operator and internet service provider in Greece. He is also on the Board of Directors of several companies in this sector; Dr. Nikos Nikolinakos, a lawyer, who divides his practice between regulatory and policy advice and competition law; and Dr. Irina Haracoglou, a lawyer, who has worked for the European Commission in the Mergers for Consumer Goods Unit of DG Competition, the UK law firm Charles Russell, and on secondment to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
A. Andreas Avgousti, Managing Director of AACS, in announcing the creation of the new company, commented: “We recognized the need to establish a multi-disciplinary team able to act effectively on a wide range of issues, and for that purpose we have brought together in AACS highly experienced lawyers, economists and engineers. All team members have real hands-on experience in the ICT sector. They come from regulators, the industry, or academia and thus know and understand the needs of our clients. They have worked across the world from Europe to Asia, from Latin America to Africa, at local and international level. AACS Ltd brings together the international experience of its members and applies it to the local circumstances of its clients.” ###