Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based CTO’ operating in the Wireless space. If you think a CTO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Brendan O’Reilly
CTO of O2
Brendan is Telefónica UK’s Chief Technology Officer, with over 15 years’ experience in Mobile Telecoms. Brendan has accountability for O2’s strategy, design, planning, test, delivery and operation of the entire mobile and fixed network, messaging and wifi supported by his team of more than 600 professional engineers. Brendan has held a number of senior roles in the Networks Leadership Team over the past seven years, with achievements including leading the development of O2’s network share partnership with Vodafone in June 2012. He is also experienced in detailed planning and delivery of radio and transmission networks. Delivering the best experience to O2’s customers is at the heart of how Brendan works and knows his people are key to achieve this. Brendan also has a strong focus on his people encouraging development and self-learning across all of Networks.
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About O2: O2 provides services such as non-voice services, including text, media messaging, games, music, and video, as well as data connections.
Yulun Song
CTO of China Unicom
Song is a software engineer scientist. He obtained his PhD from School of Compute Science, University of Glasgow in 2015. Now he serves for China Unicom Corp., as the CTO of China Unicom Big Data LTD. His interests lie on the field of applying software engineering theory into data science implementation, especially mining Telecom data value in terms of understanding people’s livelihood, economy, etc. He was awarded Excellent CTO of the Year 2017 by China Software Industry Association. He was awarded Big data domain expert of China Data Center for Food & Drug ADM Nistration in 2018. He is also active in data science academic and performs as the member of Expert of Big Data Industry Committee, registered in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of P.R.C. He holds CMMI certificate of Data Management Maturity (DMM) Model.
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About China Unicom: China Unicom is a company that provides broadband communications and information services.
Mostafa Afgani
Co-Founder and CTO of pureLiFi
Mostafa is a respected hardware and firmware engineer. A chief architect of VLC hardware platforms over the past three years, Mostafa holds three patents and has filed for two more in the VLC field. Prior to co-founding pureLiFi he developed sensitive signal anomaly detection hardware for Agilent and held a research position at DoCoMo labs, Munich, Germany. Mostafa has BSc and MSc degrees in electronics from Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany and a PhD in communications and signal processing from the University of Edinburgh.
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About pureLiFi: pureLiFi develops technology for communication networks that integrates data and lighting utility infrastructures.
Bryn Jones
CTO of Three
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About Three: Three is a British telecommunications and internet service provider.
Chenghuan Zhong
CTO & Founder of Inductosense
Bamboo is leading the technical development of the embedded sensor technology which he developed over the course of his PhD and post-doctoral research.
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About Inductosense: Inductosense is developing wireless, battery-free, sensors that can be permanently fixed.
John Naylon
Chief Technology Officer of Cambridge Broadband Networks
A co-founder of CBNL, John is responsible for research and development and holds over 11 years’ experience of developing cutting edge wireless technology. John holds a degree and PhD in computer science from the University of Cambridge.
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About Cambridge Broadband Networks: Cambridge Broadband designs wireless back-haul and access provisions that improve telecommunication network capacity and efficiency.
Ross Spearman
Chief Technology Officer of Tait Communications
Ross Spearman is the CTO for Tait Communications. He has been with Tait Communications since Jan 2016, and has responsibility for directing the company’s technology investment strategy. Mr Spearman joined Tait after returning to New Zealand from the United States where he was the CTO for Ericsson in Seattle. Mr Spearman has 25 years experience in the telecom industry, working with radio, switching and transport technologies in fixed and mobile networks. The first half of his career was spent in Research & Development, and the second half with Customer Units, working with leading Telecom Operators.He was with Ericsson in North America since 1999, most recently as CTO for a Tier 1 mobile operator account, where his team had solution responsibility for all technology provided by Ericsson to the Operator, and also consulted on strategic technology/business initiatives – including their nationwide LTE roll-out.Previously Mr Spearman was VP of Technology, driving Strategic Initiatives with IMS, IP/ATM/SONET transport products, and soft-switching in North America. In Europe he ran Product Management within Ericsson’s Access business, and began his career in New Zealand in HW and embedded SW design. Mr Spearman holds Masters and Bachelors’ degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Canterbury.
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About Tait Communications: Tait Communications is a global leader in designing, delivering and managing critical communication solutions that help utilities.
Gideon Farrell
Cofounder & CTO of Converge
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About Converge: Connected sensor networks driving a smarter physical environment.
Matthew Travers
CTO of Hanhaa
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About Hanhaa: A full service MNO supplying private 4G/5G connectivity globally / A leader in supply chain analytics with our ParceLive platform.
Oliver Leisten
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Helix Technologies
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About Helix Technologies, Sarantel: Helix Technologies is developing a range of compact, high-performance, dielectric-loaded ceramic antennas.
Jeremy Fielding
CTO of VRGO
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About VRGO: VRGO is a connected chair that provides hands free movement within VR.
Neil Edwards
CTO of Synaptix
Neil is among the foremost experts in Wi-Fi technology in Europe. He provides the technical leadership for our engineering team, and regularly works directly with customers to help them solve the most difficult technical problems. An experienced engineer with a hands-on approach, Neil will regularly work on-site with our technical team to tackle unusual or particularly difficult problems. He is the creator of STORM, our unique in-house engineering management tool, which underpins our high levels of service to customers. Neil likes to unwind by taking to the roads on his motorbike.
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About Synaptix: Synaptix leaders in the provision of technical services to public WiFi network operators.
