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A winner of the ITU young minds programme shares her story

Svetlana Skvortsova, one of the two winners of the Young Minds in Telecom 2005, shares her experiences from the SPU internship

 

My name is Svetlana Skvortsova and I am a winner of 2005 Young Minds in Telecom competition. My background is quite diverse. I have graduated from Moscow State Lomonosov University as a linguist and specialist in intercultural communications and Public Relations, but also obtained a Diploma in Information Systems Management from the University of California in Riverside.

 

Currently I am completing part-time studies towards Master of Communications Management degree at Coventry University Business School and plan to obtain a PhD from Moscow Technical University for Communications and Informatics with specialization in VoIP technology and applications in a year from now. Since I was an undergraduate student and for the last seven years I have been working at different positions in Ericsson AB in Moscow, lately as a marketing and business development manager.

 

It was by a mere chance that I saw the competition announcement, despite the fact that I visit the ITU site regularly. It was about a week before the deadline, but the moment I saw the topic “Making the internet mobile” I had no further doubts. This is the area that has long fascinated me and I thought why not give it a try. And so I did. My reward was a three-month consultancy contract with the Strategy and Policy Unit. During this time I have had an incredible pleasure of working with renowned professionals of the telecommunications industry and have utterly enjoyed the creative and facilitating work climate.

 

For the most part, I was contributing to the preparation of the 2005 ITU Internet Report that is soon going to come out under the title The Internet of Things This work was exciting and gratifying. In Ericsson it is mostly about contemporary wireless communication technologies. Here it has to do more with visions of the future, enabled by emerging technologies such as RFID (radio-frequency identification), wireless sensor networks, nanotechnology and robotics. The Internet of Things report explains how ubiquitous networks comprising an ever multiplying number of wireless sensors and RFID-enabled things are becoming reality. At a time the market for traditional wireline and mobile telecom services is approaching saturation, communication between “things” opens a new world of commercial opportunities for vendors, operators and service providers.

 

When I arrived in Geneva I hoped to see how the International Organization of which I had heard so much lives and works on a routine, day-to-day basis. In fact, the program exceeded my expectations to the level I had never deemed possible. What I mean is that I have spent three months researching topics I had had no notion before. Taking into account the relevance of these new things to the industry I am working in, the value is impossible to overestimate. I do not yet fully appreciate how much I have gained here, but I have a feeling that it will be of consequence for years and years to come.
 

Svetlana Skvortsova, October 2005




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International Telecommunication Union
Young Minds Programme
Strategy and Policy Unit
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Updated : 2011-04-04