Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board (OSAB)

David Meyer (Chairman)

David Meyer served in the British Army's Royal Corps of Signals from 1979-2010, leaving as Brigadier and Deputy CIO. During his career he held positions delivering operational information systems and services; leading units responsible for policy, procurement, operations, signals intelligence and computer network defence; and serving overseas in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq and Afghanistan. David joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as Chief Information Officer in December 2010. He holds a Master's degree in International Studies and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Chartered IT Professional.

Jon Fuller (ex officio)

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Prof Mischa Dohler

Mischa Dohler is full Professor in Wireless Communications at King’s College London, driving cross-disciplinary research and innovation in technology, sciences and arts. He is the Director of the Centre for Telecommunications Research, co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of the smart city pioneer Worldsensing, Fellow of the IEEE, Editor-in-Chief of the Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies and the EAI Transactions on the Internet of Things, and a Distinguished Member of Harvard Square Leaders Excellence.

He is a frequent keynote, panel and tutorial speaker, and has received numerous awards. He has pioneered several research fields, contributed to numerous wireless broadband, IoT/M2M and cyber security standards, holds a dozen patents, organized and chaired numerous conferences, has more than 200 publications, and authored several books. He has a citation h-index of 43.

He acts as policy, technology and entrepreneurship adviser, examples being Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, David Willetts’ 8 Great Technology Fund, Regulator Ofcom, UK House of Parliament, UK Ministries, EPSRC ICT Strategy Advisory Team, European Commission, Tech London Advocate, ISO Smart City working group, and various start-ups.

He is also an entrepreneur, composer & pianist, and fluent in 6 languages. He has talked at TEDx. He had coverage by national and international TV & radio, and his contributions have featured on BBC News and the Wall Street Journal.

David Harrison (ex-officio)

David is Director of Technology Strategy in Ofcom. He is responsible for leading Ofcom’s technical research programme and supporting Ofcom policy development across a wide range of areas including: white space and cognitive radio, unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum, radio switchover, network neutrality and next generation broadband access. David led the UHF Strategy project, which sought to identify the how to best balance the competing demands for UHF spectrum by different services including terrestrial broadcasting and mobile broadband. More recently he has been leading working on new approaches to spectrum sharing to increase the future supply of spectrum for mobile broadband and machine to machine applications.

Before joining Ofcom, David worked for the Independent Television Commission where he held the position of Deputy Director of Technology, and before that led the high frequency research and development activities in Thomson Multimedia based in Rennes.

David has published numerous technical papers on RF and high frequency engineering and holds 12 patents. David has a first class honours degree and PhD in Electrical and Electronic engineering. He can be contacted at david.mark.harrison@ofcom.org.uk.

David Hendon (ex-officio)

David Hendon is a senior advisor at Ofcom, working on spectrum, international strategy and network resilience issues. He is a member of the Smart Meters Strategic Programme Board at the Department of Energy & Climate Change and a non-executive director of Multiple Access Communications Ltd and ContinuumBridge Ltd. He is independent Chairman of the 4G/TV Co-existence Oversight Board established by DCMS. He is a Visiting Professor at Surrey University, deputy-chairman of the Radio Communications Foundation and a member of the IET’s Communications Sector Panel.

From 2002 to 2011, David was a Director in the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills where he was responsible for BIS's business-facing activities and policy in communications networks, internet, software and computer services, information and cyber security, electronics, digital content, media, publishing and postal sectors and, from 2010, the Office for Life Sciences.He was previously Chief Executive of the Radiocommunications Agency, which managed UK radio spectrum prior to the establishment of Ofcom. His earlier career included appointments in the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, Cabinet Office and the Department of Trade & Industry, all involving electronic communications. He was Chairman of the Board of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute from 1996 to 1999 and a council member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council from 2006 to 2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Gavin Young

Gavin’s current role is as Head of the Fixed Access Centre of Excellence within Vodafone. He is responsible within Vodafone Group for the fixed broadband access strategy, architecture and deployment practices across the 17 countries where Vodafone currently has fixed access assets.  

Gavin was previously Head of Strategy & Planning in Cable & Wireless Worldwide leading a team of architects responsible for the technology architecture and strategy.  He had previously worked at Bulldog Communications (later acquired by C&W Worldwide) where he held a variety of responsibilities from product development through to network operations and CTO.  Prior to that Gavin lead the Access Architecture & Design team at BT.

Gavin was a founding director of the Broadband Forum (formerly DSL Forum) was overall Technical Chairman for twelve years. In addition he has been co-chair of the UK21CN consultation’s Broadband Group, chair of the UK NICC’s DSL Task Group and also vice-chair of the NICC Ethernet Access Task Group. Gavin also serves on the IET Communications Policy Panel and the Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board (OSAB).

Greg Bensberg

Gregory Bensberg is currently the General Manager of Digital UK Ltd, the UK’s main commercial public service DTT multiplex carrying ITV and Channel 4 services to over 98% of UK households. He is a leading authority on both the technical and regulatory aspects of digital broadcasting and has over 30 years’ experience as a regulator and digital broadcast engineer.

He has previously worked as a policy and technical expert for Ofcom, the UK government and the Independent Television Commission for over 20 years. He acted as a key technical and regulatory adviser to a number of Government Ministers between 2002 and 2003 whilst they were developing the UK government’s switchover policy. He was also responsible for leading Ofcom’s spectrum clearance programme (800 MHz and 2.6GHz) which enabled the UK’s 4G spectrum auction in 2013.

He developed and led the planning and licensing of the UK’s digital switchover programme (including its UHF spectrum strategy) and its adoption of the DVB-T2 standard and the launch of terrestrial HD services in 2009. He also led Ofcom’s Digital Dividend Review project in 2005/06, which laid out the process and principles for the eventual European digital dividend programme.

Gregory is a chartered engineer and holds an MBA and BSc. He joined the ITC in 1992 after spells working for Marconi, the IBA, Quantel and Thames Television.

He was awarded an MBE in 2014 for services to communications and media.

Mike Walker

Mike is an independent consultant in telecommunications. Until his retirement in September 2009, he was the Group Research and Development Director for the Vodafone Group of companies, with the responsibility for the Group’s research activities, intellectual property and technology standards worldwide. He is a Vodafone Fellow and an Executive Technical Advisor to Vodafone.  From 2011-2013 he was Head of School for Natural and Mathematical Sciences at King’s College London.  He is a member of the Board of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, having been chairman for the 2008-2011 Board period. Mike is a non-executive director of Avanti and is a Trustee of the Alacrity Foundation. He holds the Vodafone Chair in Telecommunications at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Wireless World Research Forum. Mike is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and until June 2011 served as a member of Council of the Academy. He was the President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications for the Presidential term 2010-2011. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Technology from the University of Plymouth in 2011. He was appointed an OBE in June 2009 for his services to the telecommunications industry.

Niall Murphy

A technologist, serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Niall co-founded pan European WiFi network The Cloud in 2003, acquired by British Sky Broadcasting in 2011.

A computer scientist by training, Niall has a background in Internet infrastructure and software services, and was founder of one of the first Internet service providers in Africa in the mid-1990s.

Niall has authored and presented numerous papers around the world, including at TED, and was a co-author of the WiFi roaming framework adopted by the IETF. He contributed as a policy adviser on telecoms in South Africa in the early 90s throughan African National Congress (ANC) think tank.

Professor Linda Doyle

Linda Doyle is a Professor in Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland in the School of Engineering. Professor Doyle is the Director of CTVR. CTVR is a national research centre focusing on industry-informed research in the telecommunications field. CTVR is headquartered in Trinity College and based in six other Irish academic institutions with over 80 active researchers. Prof Doyle's own area of research is in wireless communications with a particular focus on cognitive radio, reconfigurable networks, spectrum management and art & technology. Her group has built an international reputation in experimental cognitive radio work. Prof. Doyle has published over 170 peer-reviewed papers in the field and has raised over 30 million in research funding in the last decade. Prof. Doyle is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. She is a Director of Xcelerit, a recent CTVR spin-out.