William is CTO of Access Partnership where he provides advice and support to a wide range of clients on matters related to digital technology.

He was one of the founding directors of Neul, a company developing machine-to-machine technologies and networks, which was formed at the start of 2011 and subsequently sold to Huawei in 2014 for $25m. The technology he had helped developed became the genesis for NB-IoT which went on to become the 4G and 5G standard for IoT connectivity. He became CEO of the Weightless SIG, the standards body developing a variant of the Neul technology for unlicensed spectrum, a position he held until 2019. Prior to this William was a Director at Ofcom where he managed a team providing technical advice and performing research across all areas of Ofcom’s regulatory remit. He also led some of the major reviews conducted by Ofcom including the Spectrum Framework Review, the development of Spectrum Usage Rights and cognitive or white space policy. Previously, William worked for a range of communications consultancies in the UK in the fields of hardware design, computer simulation, propagation modelling, spectrum management and strategy development. William also spent three years providing strategic management across Motorola’s entire communications portfolio, based in Chicago.

He was the youngest President of the IET – Europe’s largest Professional Engineering body – during 2014/15 where he introduced many changes to modernize the IET both in its governance and its external perception. He is a Governor at Motability, one of the UK’s largest charities which provides over 600,000 cars to those with disabilities. He serves on the Advisory Board of SpectrumX, a major US research initiative into innovative ways of managing and using radio spectrum. William is a Visiting Professor at Southampton University.

William has published 17 books including “The 5G Myth”, “Our Digital Future” and “Spectrum Management”, over 100 papers, and 18 patents. His books have proven prescient, with predictions of the future made over 20 years ago being almost entirely correct. He has been prepared to take contrarian positions, for example, on 5G where he set out why consumers would not see much benefit and hence would not pay more for a 5G service.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the IEEE and the IET. He was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science by Southampton University in recognition of his work on wireless technologies, Honorary Doctor of Technology by Anglia Ruskin University in honour of his contribution to the engineering profession and Honorary Doctor of Science by the University of Hertfordshire in recognition of his contribution to wireless technology and engineering. In 2018 he was awarded the IET’s Mountbatten medal, one of its highest honours, in recognition of his contribution to technology entrepreneurship. His biography is included in multiple “Who’s Who” publications around the world where he has been honoured with life-time achievement awards. William has a first-class honours degree in electronics, a PhD and an MBA. His PhD showed how QAM could be used for mobile connections by dynamically varying the number of modulation levels in accordance with the quality of the mobile channel – a technique now used in nearly all wireless communications.