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Member Type: Individual Profile
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Last Update: January 22, 2018
Joined: January 18, 2018

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First Name Frans
Last Name van Vuuren
Location (City, State) Kampala
Country Uganda

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Current Employer TowerPower
What is your current job title? COO
Professional Background/Education eg. BSS/OSS I have over 20+ years experience in the telecoms industry, particularly in the Mobile market in Africa and Middle East. I have worked with many Industry leaders such as Telkom SA, Siemens (Africa), MSI Cellular Investment (Africa), Celtel (Africa), Asia Cell (Iraq), Oman Mobile (Oman), Polystar OSIX (Middle East and Africa), Shabakat (Kuwait), ZAIN (IRAQ), UTL (Uganda), CellC (South Africa), Consulting Services (Kuwait, DRC & Ethiopia), Mange Service Consulting services VIVA (Kuwait), Vivacell (South Sudan) and TowerPower.
I have a widespread and sound knowledge of the GSM 2G/3G/4G (Active and Passive), Fix Line, CDMA and WiMax, TETRA and LTE Networks. With my strong analytical, time management and communication skills I know what is required to increase revenue, reduce cost and operational proficiency. I am highly experienced in CTO/COO and Executive Management, Operations and Maintenance Senior Management, Senior Program Management, Senior Project Management (Roll-out), Senior Consulting and Manage Service Director roles with the recognized technical requirements. I also have the skills to plan and solve issues by developing and re-engineering process improvement initiatives and convey complex products and services development concepts in a best practice and compelling manner.
For the last 15+ years I have worked in Africa and Middle East and Multi-cultural management, Health and Safety, Coordination, Total Quality Management, Efficient and Effective manner, staff motivation and intrinsic vendor-customer relationship falls within my skills that are required to deliver positive results.

Subject: Frans Van Vuuren Professional Biography.

Frans van Vuuren was born in a mining town called Carletonville, West of Johannesburg, South Africa in 1967. He enjoyed primary and secondary school, merely for the fact of doing sports, rugby and athletics, rather than learning. Frans loved the outdoors and still is fond of outdoor activities, especially off-roading (4X4 and camping) and exploration of the unknown. With the latter, he and a group of close friends crossed the biggest desert, Rub Al-Khali (Empty Quarters) in Oman. It took them 9 days to traverse the dunes.

At 18, he completed secondary school, HTS Jan Viljoen in Randfontein and joined the South African Military for 2 years, which was compulsory those years. He went to School of Armor where he completed junior leader ship training in the first year and qualified as an instructor. After the 2 years, he joined Telkom SA, where he started his career in the telecommunication industry. He experienced the evolution of electromechanical telecommunication (switching) all the way through to digital and joined the Mobile Industry in 1998, when working for Siemens as a Tac 2, high level support engineer.

Along the way and during his career with Telkom SA, Frans was systematically promoted and becoming technician, manager and senior technical manager in a matter of 8 years, ensuring 99.9% network availability. Technically supported the smallest region in South Africa, but with the most revenue generating exchanges, complexed network topology and subscriber based.

In 1999, Frans joined MSI CI, main shareholding company of Celtel in Africa. He was also part and instrumental of the Celtel Group success history in Africa from 1999 - 2004 and was part of a very dynamic team that was responsible for rapid deployments and startups. Frans success story during this period, is that he was the founder and integrator of the One-Network concept that Celtel (Airtel today) adopted to ensure that cross border roaming is charged as a local call.

Frans filled the shoes of Operations Director's, Regional Manager, Technical Director's, Network Executive, CTO and COO in various MNO's in Africa and Middle East.

From here onwards, Frans developed his love for Africa and the developing world. With his vast experience, he knows that he will be able to make an impact on the lives of millions of people by motivating, coaching and guiding his peers and sub-ordinates. For an example, two of his junior engineers are CTIO's of two MNO's in two separate African countries.

Not only did Frans made an impact on the lives of millions of people, he also embarked on a career path. His vision was to become one day a CEO or MD of a MNO, but has realized that it was not going to that easy. With his wealth of experience obtained in challenging countries such as Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, South Sudan, just to mentioned a few, he was lacking the academic qualifications. In 2012, he decided to started with his Master's degree and is about to complete his MSc in international Management from the University of Liverpool.

Frans is a technically outgoing chief with directness and positive attitude to work and with his ability to think out of the box, he has resolved many problems, improvement initiatives and convey complexed product and services development concepts in a best practice and compelling manner.

The main contributing factor towards Frans's success, is his passion to work in challenging environments. He strives and deliver his best under abnormal circumstances and industry pressure. With his 20+ years of experience in the telecommunication industry, Frans has the skill and talent to work and manage a Multi-cultural organization, adhere to HSE and Total Quality Management.

Frans's Transformational Leadership style enables him to works with subordinates to identify needed change, creating a vision to guide the change through intrinsic inspiration, and executing the change in tandem with committed members of a group.

He currently resides in Kampala, Uganda with his lovely wife, Sophie, their three dogs (Bandit - Jack Russel Terrier, Lola - Maltese Poodle and Coco - a strayed puppy dog they picked up in the middle of nowhere in the North of Uganda) and chickens. They have an imaginary view of Lake Victoria and wake in the mornings with the sound of bird songs and the fish eagles cries nearby.

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