Dr John Ure
John is associate professor and director of the Telecommunications Research Project at the University of Hong Kong and co-director (with Dr Peter Lovelock) of the TRPC (TRP Corporate), the consulting, services and training arm of the TRP. He now lives in Singapore where TRPC Pte Ltd is registered, but continues to direct the TRP and the Telecom InfoTechnology Forum (TIF) out of Hong Kong.
John graduated in economics from the University of Hull in the north of England, then worked as research assistant at the School of Economics, University of Leeds, took his economics masters at Birkbeck College, University of London, and his doctorate, a study of Hong Kong's telecommunications, was awarded by the Council for National Academic Awards in Britain. He taught economics, the history of economic thought and economic history at the University of East London (North East London Polytechnic) before his arrival in Hong Kong in January 1989 when he turned his attention to the telecommunications sector. His published papers and studies on telecommunication economics, policy and regulatory reform are well known internationally.
He is majority author and editor of Telecommunications Development in Asia (HKU Press 2008) a sequel to Ure (ed) Telecommunications in Asia: Policy Planning and Development (HKU Press, 1995, 1997). In addition to teaching masters' programmes and doctoral supervision at the University of Hong Kong, and private training programmes, John is a consultant to the World Bank, the European Commission, the ITU and various other UN agencies, such as UNDP and ESCAP, to telecom regulators around the Asia region, to consumer councils and many private IT and telecom companies. John has also served on numerous Hong Kong Government policy advisory committees and was the advocate of the proposal in 2001 to adopt a royalties-based auction model for 3G mobile phone spectrum assignment.
John is on the editorial boards of Telecommunications Policy and the Info journal and regularly acts as a referee for academic journals, the Universities Research Grants Committee, writes book reviews and acts as an external examiner for doctoral students.
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