Stefan Zehle

Working in telecoms since 1987, Stefan Zehle was involved in the first GSM mobile network licence applications in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. He ran telecoms projects in 68 countries including 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G. As the second person on the ground (Director of Marketing, Strategy & Regulatory Affairs) he played a pivotal role in launching Nedjma, the third Algerian GSM operator, launching new propositions transforming the market and introduced best practice interconnect agreements in Algeria. He has worked on over 90 spectrum licence valuation projects, spectrum auctions and beauty contests for mobile and fixed wireless access licences. The report “Estimating the mid-band spectrum needs in the 2025-2030 time frame” authored by Stefan for the GSMA became the most downloaded report in its history from the GSMA website. Other reports in the public domain include “Vision 2030 – Low-band spectrum for 5G”, “Mobile Services, Spectrum and Network Evolution to 2025”, “Sustainable spectrum pricing”, “The cost of spectrum auction distortions”, and “The benefits of technology neutral spectrum licences”. Stefan is a regular speaker at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and over 70 telecoms, telecoms regulatory, and spectrum conferences. He is the co-author of “Guide to Business Planning”, published by the Economist.  A native German speaker, Stefan is also fluent in English and French.