The 2022 Judges

Rosalind Singleton is a CEO, board chair, NED, advisor and investor with over 30 years of experience in the technology sector. She is the CEO of Spring Fibre, an FTTH start up and the Chair of the UK5G Advisory Boar,d providing advice to and working closely with the Department for Digital, Cultural, Media and Sport (DCMS).
For the last five years Rosalind has been an active angel investor and mentor and has led several deals, focussing on tech businesses with a female founder. She is a member of the Angel Academe Advisory Board.
Rosalind joined UK Broadband in 2013 and was Managing Director from 2017 until it integrated into it’s parent company in 2019 following delivery of the ThreeBroadband 5G launch network. She has previously held senior roles at BT Openreach, Cable and Wireless, Vodafone, various VNOs, and international operators.
Rosalind is a member of Ofcom’s Spectrum Advisory Board which provides independent advice to Ofcom on strategic spectrum management issues. She is also an Independent NED on the board of Alphawave PLC and an advisor to multiple start and scale-ups.

Itret Latif is CEO of the Federation of Communications Services (FCS). He has held several senior non-executive positions in Telecoms and Energy and has provided evidence to both the House of Commons and House of Lords select committees on telecoms and energy policy. In his evidence to the House of Lords in 2012 he was the first to identify broadband as an essential service and a utility. At the same hearing, he called for regulatory change and restructuring of BT with Openreach being separated to become a legal entity owning both the infrastructure assets and engineering operations. Itret has an energy utility background, as a former senior executive of Scottish and Southern Energy plc (SSE), he established and headed highly profitable SSE retail telecoms and gas businesses. He joined the FCS board in 2009 and was appointed FCS Deputy Chairman in Summer 2016. He brings more than 18 years of telecoms and energy commercial & policy development expertise and industry leadership experience.

In a range of posts at Lancaster University spent 30 years deploying campus, regional and national networks across the UK, with a particular interest in the more rural areas. Retired from his role as Deputy Director-ISS in 2009 and founded Broadband for the Rural North Ltd (B4RN), a not for profit community benefit society which is deploying a full fibre FTTH network across North Lancashire, South Cumbria and parts of North Yorkshire. This is now delivering 1GbE and 10Gbs symmetric broadband to over 9,500 properties in the deeply rural last few percent of the country. Awarded an MBE for services to rural broadband in 2015. Retired as B4RN Chief Executive at the end of 2020. Holds a Professorial Fellowship in the Department of Computing, Lancaster University and is a Fellow of the RSA.

Melissa has been a driving force behind the rise of Event Cinema; her expansive strategic vision and superb commercial acumen she has used to simultaneously grow an organisation and change an industry.

Melissa spent 20 years in the UK film industry; 7 years at Disney and 3 years as Director of Film Operations for Paramount Pictures. She set up her own consultancy in 2009 and was retained by Royal Opera House to develop their own distribution department. Over time, seeing the position, branding and infrastructure required to help the industry to grow, she invented the name ‘Event Cinema’ to help audiences recognise the art form and set up the Event Cinema Association in 2012. She appointed a board of 10 key figures in the industry and with a global membership including Odeon, the British Museum and the BBC went on to organise conferences, trade shows, awards and networking events, as well as commenting in the trade press about the growth of the market.

Melissa’s achievements have been recognised with the Outstanding Contribution to Event Cinema Award at the 2015 ECA Awards, and she was also ranked 33rd in the Celluloid Junkie Top Women in Cinema in 2017. In 2020 she took a new direction as Managing Editor of Broadband Journal for the SCTE, Society for Broadband Professionals, based in London, publishing four journals a year and managing all the marketing and communications for the Society.

Ian is a Principal at Analysys Mason, a specialist telecoms advisory firm, and is one of its leading experts in broadband and utility telecoms with over 22 years’ experience in telecoms consulting. He has worked on telecoms projects for national and local government, regulators, operators, investors and end-user organisations, and is adept at managing multiple stakeholder groups involved in complex programmes. Ian specialises in issues related to public policy and market competition, and his experience ranges from strategy development through to procurement and commercial contract negotiations for public-sector, enterprise and operator clients wishing to develop innovative service solutions.
Ian has extensive experience in developing broadband policies, building network cost models, appraising commercial models and designing delivery strategies. He has managed over 40 broadband projects for public authorities that have resulted in successful broadband roll-out and the subsequent achievement of socioeconomic benefits for citizens and businesses through high levels of take-up. He authored the study to lower barriers to telecoms infrastructure deployment published by the Broadband Stakeholder Group that led to the formation of the UK government’s ‘Barrier Busting Taskforce’.
Ian is currently managing Analysys Mason’s role as technical adviser to the National Broadband Plan in the Republic of Ireland and advising operators on their bids for the UK’s Gigabit Programme. Prior to joining Analysys Mason, Ian worked for a geographic information system (GIS) company modelling utility networks and was formally trained as an electricity network distribution engineer.
Ian is named as one of Total Telecoms ‘Connected Britain’s Top 100 Influencers’. He is a Chartered Engineer and Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.