‘Your phone, my life: or, how did that phone land in your land’ – is the story and adventure of how the world built its mobile networks over the past 30 years.
The authors’ journey started in the USSR, Ukraine, where she, as part of a team, negotiated with the Minister of Telecommunications of a country with virtually no telecom infrastructure.
She was there when Ukraine became independent in December 1991. From Kiev her work took her first to other countries in the former Eastern Block and then to Western Europe, Kosovo, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and Haiti where she was the CEO in charge of mobile network operations managing through periods of political unrest, war, bomb attacks and other serious obstacles.
Looking back, she says ‘I’m happy our efforts made that people are able to stay in touch, no matter what’.
Today, the mobile telecommunications industry provides 10 billion connections, is contributing almost 5% to the global GDP, provides well over 30 million jobs and pays US$ 500 billion in taxes worldwide. It enables the famous tech companies to exist and virtually everyone in the world to work, even in Covid 19 times.
This is ‘Your phone, my life’.
