Paul Cross (Chief Executive Officer)
 
Paul Cross is the founder and an owner of OptiComm as well as Optimal Cable Services which is one of the Southern Hemispheres largest Fibre Optic cable manufacturing and accessory suppliers, established in 2003 the facility is a major supplier to Australia/NZ telecom, Enterprise and infrastructure companies.

Opticomm began as a division of Optimal Cables and entered into a Joint Venture with Hills Industries, one of Australia’s largest corporations with turnover in excess of $1 billion per annum, in 2007 to provide greater resources, capital and to complete a product offering that provides end to end FTTx solutions. Previous to founding Optimal, Paul was the Managing Director of Belden Cables Australia and has held several General Manager Positions including time with Schneider Electric, Square D Company and Email Westinghouse. Paul has presented at numerous industry events and has been a member of several Standards advisory panels both locally and internationally.

Paul has a degree in Electrical Engineering to complement an Electrical trade qualification and has spent almost 20 years in the fibre optic market.

Phil Smith (General Manager, Regulatory and Carrier Relations) 

Mr Phil Smith has been in the ICT industry since 1974 when he joined the fledgling computer industry as a mainframe Support Engineer with Univac and rose to the level of NSW Support Manager before moving into sales at the inception of Unisys. Phil spent two years in New Zealand and two years in the UK during his 14 years at Univac/Sperry/Unisys. Phil joined MidState Computers in 1987 as the sales and marketing manager. The company was acquired by ICL and Phil was assigned to a 2 year contact in Hong Kong to head up sales of mid-range hardware and decision support system around Asia.

After returning from HK and a brief time at Fujitsu Australia, Phil joined Jtec, an Australian manufacturer of advanced voice and data equipment and in the roles of Marketing Manager for the Asia Pacific Region and was later appointed Jtec’s Chief Representative for China. After leaving Jtec in 2001, Phil founded Beijing AustChina Technology, a company distributing Australian ICT solutions in China.

In 2005 Phil joined Optimal Cable Services, Australia’s longest continually operational fibre optic cable manufacturer, to establish a fibre-to-the-home division. This division was spun off from Optimal in 2007 to form OptiComm in a joint venture with Hills Industries Limited. OptiComm is a wholesale access carrier specializing in the rollout of fibre-to-the-premise solutions to greenfield developments.

Stephen Davies (General Manager, Operations) 

Mr Stephen Davies has been working in the ICT industry for over 25 years, specialising in the design of data and telecommunications networks. The former Managing Director of Atlas Global Net which was bought by Westnet in 1998, he has extensive operational, technical and strategic planning experience in a number of telecommunication carriers including Comswest, Optus, Amcom, Silk and Bright Telecommunications.

Over the last 10 years Mr Davies has been actively involved in the establishment of the Fibre to the Home industry in Australia and New Zealand. Starting in 2001 with Bright Telecommunications, he was the Chief Network Architect and later the Operations Manager behind Australia's first FTTH network. He continued at Bright until 2004 when the pilot project was put up for sale. He subsequently joined Titan ICT Consultants and continued to support Bright and other carriers entering the FTTH market.

Stephen is regarded as Australia's leading expert on Fibre to the Home with involvement in more than 40 projects throughout Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East and in the past consulting to several FTTH operators in Australia, including Broadcast Engineering Services, FuzeConnect, OptiComm and GeoMedia Broadband.

Mr Davies has a Master of Science, Master of Business Administration and a Post Graduate Diploma in Telecommunications Management. He joined OptiComm in October 2008.

Geoff Aldridge (General Manager, Sales and Marketing) 

Mr Geoff Aldridge has been in ICT for 16 years, 8 years in the UK working for United Artists, Cabletel and TCI in the deployment of cable TV networks and Telephony networks as designer and then Manager for infrastructure integration. During this time was involved in the integration of GIS systems working on Smallworld and GeoNet, and rose to Engineering Manager for London design office co-ordinating network builds for East London, Leeds and Edinburgh.

Mr Aldridge's initial training was as a City and Guilds apprentice tool maker and then onto drafting – gaining HNC in Electrical Engineering, working for design consultant group involved in various MOD project, working up to designer for shipboard radar equipment.

After eight years in ICT in the UK, he immigrated to Perth, Australia, initially working as consultant for company in the UK and then accepted Engineering Manager Role with Broadcast Engineering Services (BES). Geoff set up BES cable TV division deploying Hybrid Fibre Cable TV networks into green field estates approx 40 networks from 1996 to 2005. In 1998 successfully deployed first commercial Broadband DOCSIS Cable modem network with Cisco and partnering with IINet on the Ellenbrook estate. Since then successfully deploy another 10 sites with Broadband cable modem, in 2004/2005 deploy first standard base Fibre to the Home network in Australia using EPON.