2018-05-23

TETRA industry expert Malcolm Quelch retires from TCCA Board

Source: The Critical Communications Review | Gert Jan Wolf editor

Sepura’s respected TETRA industry expert Malcolm Quelch retires from TCCA Board and key Working Group after six years of ‘immeasurable contributions’.

Malcolm Quelch, vice chair of TCCA’s Board and chair of the TETRA Industry Group (TIG) is to retire from the industry. Malcolm has served as a Board Member of TCCA for the last six years and has been vice chair since June 2016. He has been responsible for the activities of the TIG since 2013.

The TIG is the TCCA Working Group responsible for promoting TETRA, driving the development of the technology and advocating an evolutionary path towards future solutions for mission critical communications, based on open standards. It develops expertise on the strengths of TETRA and LTE as competing, complementary or integrated solutions for the critical communications market. The TIG has done much to ensure the ongoing success of the TETRA standard – global shipments of TETRA increased by 15 per cent in 2017[1].

Malcolm has more than 20 years’ experience in telecoms, preceded by two decades in the semiconductor world. During his career he has worked for Philips Components, Philips Telecom–PMR, Simoco and is currently a consultant for Sepura. Much of Malcolm’s work has involved managing the technical activities of these businesses, with many of his posts at Board level.

TCCA Board Chair Mladen Vratonjić said: “I want to thank Malcolm for his enormous contribution, devotion to TCCA and the many hours of hard work he has put in it. Malcolm was not only the vice chair of the Board, he was our chief strategist, our financial and legal advisor, our main ‘negotiator’ and the Board Member to whom we turned to help us to determine the Board's collective attitude towards difficult issues. His many contributions to our success and that of the TETRA industry are immeasurable, and we are going to miss him tremendously.”

The new TCCA Board vice chair will be determined at TCCA’s June Board meeting. The new chair of the TIG is Francesco Pasquali, who has been a TCCA Board Member and Director since 2006, responsible for liaison with the Technical Forum and the TCCA IOP Certification Authority (ISCOM).