Whos Who?
Charles Curry, B.Eng, FIET. Managing Director
Charles Curry is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and founder & Managing Director of Chronos Technology Ltd. Charles graduated in Electronics from Liverpool University in 1973, and started his career at GEC Hirst Research Centre, progressing to Racal Instruments where he was responsible for sales of test equipment including specialist frequency and time products such as Loran C and Caesium standards. Later with GSE Rentals Charles was involved with some of the first civil GPS and laptop PC deployments into the North Sea offshore oil industry during the early 1980’s.
He founded Chronos, a leading system integrator for synchronisation and timing products in the UK telecom industry, in 1986. Chronos has supplied and installed 1000’s of GPS & Timing systems worldwide for mobile and fixed line telecom operators. The Chronos Synchronisation MasterClass has been delivered to more than a 1000 delegates across the globe.
Charles founded the International Telecom Sync Forum (ITSF) in 2001 and chairs the ITSF Steering Group. He is also a member of the Workshop in Sync in Telecommunications Systems (WSTS) Steering Group which meets annually in Boulder, Colorado. Charles is on the Steering Group for the Technology Strategy Board’s Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) for Digital Systems - Location and Timing Programme. Charles is also a member of the Industry Advisory Boards for the Universities of Liverpool and Bath, Electrical and Electronics Faculties.
Joanne Akers, General Manager and Company Secretary
Joanne joined Chronos in September 2001 from Fortis Insurance in Gloucester where she was responsible for 450 employees, initially as Personnel Officer before being promoted to Senior Personnel Officer after 18 months’ service.
Prior to that, Joanne, who is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, was Personnel Officer for Gloucester based Dupont for 5 years. Joanne is responsible for all the day to day business administration at Chronos.
Linda Clark, Financial Controller
Linda Clark joined Chronos in January 2004 as Management Accountant, before being promoted to Financial Controller in February 2007.
Linda was formerly Company Accountant for the Harry Kear group of companies which includes The Speech House and Forest Hills Golf Club. Prior to that, Linda was with T P Jordeson & Co, a timber importer based in Ross on Wye. Linda manages all financial reporting for the Company.
Steve Sears, Customer Support & NPD Manager
Steve Sears has been the Chronos Customer Support Manager since 2001 after joining the company in 1999 as an installation and commissioning engineer. His career began with a 4 year apprenticeship at Siemens Plessey Systems producing military and civil Radar systems. Steve then went on to work for a major manufacturer of digital television transmission equipment and then returned to Siemens for a major contract on a north London MOD site. Steve manages the Chronos support team responsible for the 24x365 helpdesk and man on site module replacement services offered to customers as part of the Chronos Spares Support Plan (SSP).
Clive Wright, Sales Manager
Clive Wright is the Sales Manager for Chronos and is responsible for all the company's sales and business development activities. Clive has been with Chronos since 2003 but has been in Telecoms all of his career starting with an Apprenticeship with BT in 1981 in London working out of Whitehall Exchange, while completing a Diploma in Telecommunications. Clive has experienced all sides of the business working as an Engineer, Project Manager, and Pre-Sales Engineer before moving into the Sales environment in 1997 with Symmetricom. Clive has travelled extensively with Symmetricom, Dataflex and Chronos and has managed accounts in all regions including EMEA, ASIA and the Americas, giving him a broad knowledge of all the requirements of a Telecom Operator.
Chris Roberts, Business Manager
Chris began his career in telecommunications in 1982 in BT, and is therefore one of the few of his generation that have physically worked on analogue switches and transmission equipment as well as today's digital systems. Chris moved to UK's first alternate operator Mercury in 1988 where he was responsible for the maintenance and support of the South Wales area. In 1990, Chris joined Newbridge Networks and remained with them until 2001 when he joined Chronos. During this time Chris headed up the European, Middle East & African Network Management support team as well as being part of a small team who set up Newbridge's first Professional Services team. As well as developing many of the tools and processes that were used to deliver the technical professional services, Chris was also responsible for identifying and signing up partners to help Newbridge (and latterly Alcatel) deliver a complete service portfolio. Chris' first role when joining Chronos in 2001 was to begin developing new trading activities in Scandinavia. These activities are now proving very successful for both Chronos and its clients. Chris is currently also responsible for all of Chronos' Knowledge based services and its SyncWatch system.
Steve Newcombe, MSc. MIET, Account Manager UK
Steve joined Chronos as an Account Manager in April 2006, although his connection with Symmetricom and its constituents goes back to 1999. Steve's involvement in telecommunications began in 1984 as an antenna design engineer, progressing into engineering management and culminating in Director status of a leading UK antenna manufacturing and installation business. He moved into the Sales environment in 1999 selling Symmetricom (formerly Datum) time and timing synchronisation solutions for enterprises and telecomms carriers.
Steve holds a Master of Science Degree and is a Member of the IET.
Calum Dalmeny, BSc (Hons), Technical Manager
Calum graduated in Electronics from Manchester University in 1985 and started his career as an Electronics Design Engineer for Dowty Electronics. A role as Technical Sales Engineer followed for Datel Semiconductor UK. Calum has subsequently held various Product Marketing Manager roles for Semtech Semiconductor UK, Harris Semiconductor UK, Pulse Engineering and Connor-Winfield. Calum is responsible for developing and bringing to the market a new range of Chronos products to leverage recent strategic developments in timing technology and address the emerging timing requirements for Next Generation Telecom Networks. He will also be managing the product marketing for the new SyncWatch “Global” round-the-clock telecom network synchronisation quality monitoring system and will help to bring to the market new product developments in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Quality of Service Solutions for applications in the geolocation industry.
Gregg Watson, Account Manager - Scandinavia
Gregg joined Chronos in 2008 as Account Manager for our successful Scandinavian market. Formerly Section Manager with Tesco responsible for the Online Shopping Department for Liverpool, he brings extensive customer relationship and managerial skills.
Gregg holds a BSc (Hons) in Applied Computer Technology from Liverpool John Moore’s University.
Steve Wells , Account Manager
Steve joined from Chronos’ major supply partner Symmetricom Inc, a leading timing and synchronisation manufacturer based in the USA, where he worked for nine years firstly as a Sales Engineer responsible for pre-sales support and then as Regional Sales Manager responsible for sales and business development for the EMEA region. Prior to this Steve was a Network Design Engineer for Cable & Wireless responsible for core network sites and leading new design projects. He started his career in the Royal Signals where he spent seven years installing, maintaining and operating all types of telecommunications equipment and information systems.
Andy Proctor, MRIN, FInstSMM, Divisional Manager GNSS Applications & Solutions
Andy spent 12 years in the Royal Navy, leaving in 1998 as a Chief Communications and Electronic Warfare Engineer and joined a GNSS and Wireless Testing company, firstly in charge of global customer support then in a variety of Technical (including training) and Sales roles working across EMEA, Asia and the Americas. During this time Andy was involved in the development of the A-GPS standard and testing methodology for 3GPP and GCF/PTCRB. Andy then managed a Wireless/GPS testing facility in the UK before moving to the Defence and Homeland Security market with VT Group where much of his work required high levels of security clearance. Andy's role at Chronos is to manage the development and growth of the GNSS product and service portfolio within Chronos. Andy is a member of the Royal Institute of Navigation and an Fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management.
John Lyons, BSc, MSc, Engineering & Projects Manager
John started his telecommunications career in 1978 as an apprentice telecommunications engineer for Plessey. He has practical experience on TXE4A, System X, PDH, SDH, various network management and Intelligent Network (IN) platforms. Over the 21 years he was working for Plessey, GPT and Marconi Comms, he gained extensive commercial, technical and project management experience including involvement in strategic activities such as SLAs and chairing technical and performance review meetings with customers. His last role before joining Chronos was to manage Marconi's international support contracts on switching and IN platforms. John joined Chronos in 1999 to head up the operations department and is responsible for pre sales technical support, testing, installation and commissioning. He also project manages all live implementation and handover on all telecom contracts and systems.
Chris Farrow, BSc (Hons), AMInstP, MIET, Technical Manager
Chris is responsible for all technical services including Synchronisation MasterClass Training, Sync Audit and network planning consultancy, customer demonstrations and SyncWatch product development. Chris participates in the ITU Study Group 15 Question 13 (Synchronisation) and regularly presents synchronisation papers at international conferences such as WSTS and ITSF. Chris joined Chronos from Marconi’s UK Technical Assistance Centre in Liverpool in January 2006. During his time at Marconi, Chris gained 17 years experience working in all aspects of telecommunications and was responsible for the field trial, rollout and support of enhanced synchronisation products and services within Marconi’s "System X" Switching and SDH/DWDM products.
Chris holds an Honours degree in Physics & Electronics from UMIST – University of Manchester, Institute of Science & Technology.
Billy Marshall, Sales Engineer
Billy Marshall - Sales Engineer
Billy has been with Chronos since 2001, joining from Xerox where he had worked both in manufacturing configuration and test and later in a customer order fulfillment role, ensuring customer needs were met and balanced against the capacity of the production line.
Billy joined Chronos as a test lab technician integrating and customising telecom synchronisation equipment prior to installation. During his time at Chronos Billy has been involved with all the operations areas of the business including configuration and test, installation, support and pre-sales activities. Billy currently provides technical expertise to our clients and into the Sales team, dealing with the customer prior to sale, proving and testing new products and technologies both at Chronos and customer testbeds right through to finalising deployment configurations. Billy is the trainer for telecom products and software and regularly delivers courses and workshops to our customers.
Beverley Coleman, Order Processing & Credit Manager
Beverley joined Chronos in 2001 as Credit Manager, taking on the additional area of Order Processing in 2004.
Formerly with Microlease as Credit Control Manager, she now has over 20 years experience in credit control.
Beverley is responsible for all order processing and associated credit management for the company.
Louise Davies, Marketing & Pre-Sales Manager
Louise is responsible for PR, marketing communications and pre-sales activities and joined Chronos in July 2001 from Alcoa.
Louise has 10 years marketing communications experience gained in business to business environments for both domestic and international markets.
Amanda Cox, Internal Sales Co-Ordinator
Amanda joined Chronos in 2002 and works with the sales team. She is responsible for the preparation of customer quotations, suppliers’ pricing and leadtimes. Amanda is also an Internal Quality Auditor.
Registered in England and Wales Number: 2056049
Registered Office: Stowfield House, Upper Stowfield, Lydbrook, Gloucestershire, GL17 9PD
Tel: +44 (0) 1594 862200 Fax: +44 (0) 1594 862211
VAT Registration Number: GB 791 3120 44
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