Press Release: WASPA management committee assigned responsibilities

WASPA management committee assigned responsibilities

Released: 09 March 2010

The Wireless Application Service Providers' Association (WASPA) has announced the names of the people driving its management committee for 2010 and the portfolios and working groups they will be responsible for.

WASPA founder Leon Perlman once again serves as the organisation's chairman. Said Perlman, "I'm delighted to once again serve the industry as the chairman of WASPA. I would also like to thank all outgoing management committee members for their dedication to the industry during the past year, as well as thank all the returning members for once again making their time and expertise available to WASPA and its members.

"We're expecting another year of excellent growth for all our members as the mobile market continues to grow. By lobbying for our industry's interests and providing a self-regulation mechanism for WASPs, we will continue to instill consumer and business confidence in the WASP industry to support its growth."

The new management committee together with their areas of responsibility is as follows:

Casper de Villiers, Clickatell's co-founder and operations director, will once again serve on the WASPA management committee and will chair the finance working group. He will also be WASPA's vice chair and treasurer for 2010. He has more a decade of experience in the WASP environment and is Clickatell's representative at the GSM Association. De Villiers has served on the WASPA Code of Conduct Working Group in the past.
Michael Hainebach of ViaMedia, is a long-standing member of the WASPA management committee and of the Code of Conduct Working Group. He will chair the Code of Conduct Working Group this year. Currently the marketing director at ViaMedia, Hainebach previously worked for the pioneering WASP, iTouch.
Neil Hutchinson, managing director and co-founder of Grapevine Interactive Marketing, is another returning member of the management committee and will again chair the Public Relations Working Group. He has extensive marketing experience and nearly a decade of experience in the WASP environment.
Russel Stromin, an industry veteran with more than 20 years experience in the technology industry and head of Strike Media, will chair the Membership Working Group.
Norman Parkin, CEO of Integrat, has been intimately involved in WASPA since the beginning. As co-founder of Integrat - a company which focuses on aggregation services - he has gained extensive experience of mobile networks as well as WASPs and their specific needs. He will be the chair of the Aggregator Working Group.
Gavin Penkin, Exactmobile's director of Portal and Mobile Entertainment services, has been a member of the WASPA management committee for the past three years and has been active on the various committees since WASPA's inception. He will head the Networks Working Group as chairman.
Leon Perlman, the founder of WASPA, is taking the role of chairman as well as of chair of the Regulatory Working Group. A former scientist, he has been in the telecommunications industry since the early 1990's. WASPA's chairman since 2005, Perlman has also served on the WASPA's regulatory portfolio since the organisation was established.

ENDS

About WASPA

WASPA represents the mobile development; value added services and content services community in South Africa. After lobbying the mobile operators and WASPs in late 2003 for an industry body, WASPA's formative meeting was held in August 2004. Membership of WASPA was made mandatory by the mobile operators and TV stations for any company doing value added services in South Africa.

WASPA's remit is to promote and self-regulate the WASP industry. As part of the self-regulatory component of WASPA, there is the now internationally recognized and emulated self-regulatory regime for mobile value added services that includes the WASPA Code of Conduct & Advertising Rules. WASPA's Code of Conduct regulates inter alia, competitions, chat, adult services, spam, CRM, advertising of services,subscription services and pricing. The first version of the Code was passed in June 2004 and implemented on 1 September 2005. It has been updated numerous times as the need has arisen.

Enforcement of the Code & Advertising Rules is achieved by a novel quasi-judicial system that consists of a procedure for lodging and responding to complaints where it is thought the Code is being contravened. Adherence to the Code and the Advertising rules is mandatory for all providers operating in South Africa.

ICT lawyers acting as WASPA adjudicators will find on the merits and have the power to suspend, fine, expel any WASP or Information Provider found to contravene the Code rules. Adjudications are enforced through contractual provisions in all WASP agreements. There is also a 3-person appeals panel as well as an emergency panel.

Issued by:

Ivan Booth
Reliable Sources PR
082 851 7419
ivan (at) reliablesources.co.za