Andrea Podda

Passion for telecommunications started during the study has been confirmed with the degree with honours in Electrical Engineering with a thesis on the use of neural networks for image transmission. During his university studies in the mid 80's he founded a research statistics firm, Ri.Stat., which allowed him to develop a passion for business management. In early 90s he worked in some research centres for IBM Semea, focusing on parallel computing. In '93 he joined Telecom Italia, where has subsequently held various positions and roles gradually growing more in the technical field, working in some cases directly with the CEO. He also made an interesting experience in Brazil, at the subsidiary TeleCentroSul in start-up phase. He became VP in 2000, when, looking for new stimuli in the very first Internet era, joined Tiscali. Since the beginning of this new adventure, he has held important positions in the technical operations of the European ISP Tiscali. Firstly head of the network transmission and switching department, then head up to the current responsibility of CTO, including Customer Operations for Tiscali. In the years he has been also busy for a relationship with the Authority AGCOM and other government agencies. Since 2003 he is representative of Tiscali founder and serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors Janna important initiative, the consortium who first laid an unrepeated submarine fiber optic cable between Sardinia and Sicily. He is a board member of the National Council of AICT, was project manager of IKNOS, a research center funded by MIUR, and currently leads an annual course in telecommunications engineering for the University of Cagliari. Since 2010 he is a member of the Executive Committee for the development of Italian Ultra Broadband Networks established by the Minister of Economic Development. He has been working since years for establishing a strong partnership with some important Chinese vendors. He was born in 1964, married and father of a fantastic 11 year old boy.