I’ve been asked by several Falkland Islanders who I am so here is the inside track! My name is Chris Gare and I’ve visited the Falkland Islands thirteen times since my first visit in 2000. I love the islands and enjoy all my trips, especially talking to the islanders about telecommunications. I’m also a radio amateur and have operated from Stanley on several occasions. I’ve been a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology since 1986.
I am an entrepreneur, not a consultant, and my motto is “Advising is easy; it’s the doing that’s hard”.
I started my career in 1971, working for ICL in the Advanced Technology department, where I helped design mainframe computers that filled a room. I was privileged to have Intel’s 1st microprocessor, the 4004, in Europe to play with. I then worked for Texas Instruments and Motorola Semiconductors with European responsibility for marketing their ranges of 16-bit microprocessors through the 1970s.
In 1982, I was employee #75 at Microsoft, where Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were my line managers. I then started Microsoft Europe from my garage in Bedford.
I decided to change career and went to work for Cable & Wireless in 1992. As a founder member of the Group Technology function, I was responsible for driving technology innovation globally, including at Optus in Australia, Hong Kong Telecom, and C&W USA. Notably, I made quarterly visits to Batelco, the current parent company of Sure South Atlantic, to discuss advanced telecommunication technologies.
When I joined C&W, it was pre-Internet, and I spent the 1990s on a worldwide evangelistic campaign in spite of much opposition from those who did not believe that the Internet Protocol would come to dominate the world (which was most employees in C&W around the world). Strangely, these were mainly those who were responsible for the data services!
However, I was supported by many forward thinkers in the company, and eventually I won all my battles and inherited the ship by taking over global responsibility for advanced services strategy and technology standards worldwide. I was the first to trial Cisco’s VPN software in the world in Hong Kong.
I left C&W in 2000 on a high and, with a colleague, founded a company called Nexagent to create a significant part of the ‘business Internet’. Nexagent was acquired by EDS, which was subsequently acquired by Hewlett-Packard.
It was when I was leaving C&W that I first visited the Falkland Islands to talk to FIG about telecommunications on the islands, and after a couple of public presentations at the FIDC, I proposed the creation of the Falkland Islands Internet Initiative to promote the importance of the Internet. I actually purchased several important URLs, such as falklandisland.com, which is now used by the Falkland Islands Tourist Board (I donated it to them several years ago).
In 2009, I contacted the Chamber of Commerce about using a start-up company called Actual Experience to monitor the Quality of Experience of Sure’s Internet service. The monitoring service concluded in 2015 after a successful run.
From 2010 to 2017, I was retained by FIG to independently resolve telecommunications complaints, and in the end, I investigated around 50, digging down until I found the root cause. This means that I am fairly knowledgeable about the trials, tribulations, and successes of Falkland Islands telecommunications.
Chris Gare