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DualPass project (under construct)

My name is Ivelin Atanasov. My current job is senior engineer for the core network of Globul, a Bulgarian mobile operator. I am not an Engineer by diploma; my background is mathematics and my favourite disciplines were Probability Theory and Logic.

Before the political changes I worked for the Bulgarian Academy of Science. Then, approximately 18 years ago I entered the Telecom branch as a specialist in the International and Long-distance Dept of BTC, the Bulgarian Telecom. My responsibility was to acquire and implement the new for that time CCITT Signaling System No.7. In this my role I took part in the establishment of the modern international telephony network of the Country.

Implementation of international routes was relative routine task, provided that SS7 network is established. Together with the engineers of the International Telephone Exchange (ITE), it was completed till the end 1999. During that time I was the representative of BTC at all international SS7 events; I was the ultimate contact point and decision maker for all organizational activities related to the international SS7 connectivity of the Country and all SS7 problems that were not fixed at the level of ITE. During that time I did SS7 training for more than 150 engineers from the Operating Division of BTC. Among them today there is at least one Director, three or four Department managers, many leading Engineers working in almost all operators in the Country; for this reason I think I deserve the funny title "Engineer Honoris Causa".

At the end of 1999 the international network was established, the new technology was acquired and I wasn´t needed there any more. To preserve myself from professional death, I joined Nortel Networks as a field support engineer for DMS100 mobile switching systems. In October 2001 Nortel closed its office in Bulgaria and soon after I started at Siemens I&C Bulgaria as a sales engineer. I worked there till October 2003 and after one and a half year intensive on the job sales training, quite out of a sudden, I was replaced by a guy with heavy ties in the local company, who used to say "Kill the sales" all the time and, as far as I learnt later, he almost succeeded.

I started immediately as a Sales manager for Applicata, a small but vital Bulgarian provider of telecom solutions (now IP and IMS solutions as well). No matter of the title, my responsibility comprised presentations, letters to clients, answers to requests for information, documentation for tenders, network and service solutions. This is the most productive period of my professional life and, although I moved to another job in 2005, I still keep very good relations with this company.

At my current job I took part in the preparation of the core network Technical Requirements (TR) for the 3G tender. Then I took part in the evaluation of the offers for the 3G tender, and finally I was test manager for the 3G Multi-vendor verification tests for the 3G project that followed soon after.

Today I am responsible for interconnection tests, I take part in network and services troubleshooting, QoS evaluations in the core network, development of network and services solutions; I write SLAs when needed, TRs for tenders when such happen to appear on the horizons. At the moment I am deeply involved in a project to implement EU Regulation III unbundling in Globul. Before the company was sold I was involved in Diameter project and in IMS project that went at DT group level.

I've done occasionally lectures at the Technical University in Sofia. Presentations can be found on this link:

My professional interests comprise first of all signaling protocols - SS7 and SIP - specs and implementation, AXE10/810 switching systems, and IMS. But I am not a switching engineer and I´ve never wanted to be such. I am trying to keep myself informed about IP networking (mainly for the IMS). I am interested also in OOP and design patterns and I´ve been feeling some passion to turn back to software development from time to time recently. In fact, I´ve never brocken up with programming.

Such a diverse professional experience might tempt anyone to have career ambitions. I don´t have such ambitions, but I admit I used to have. I passed 5-week management training in the States in 1996, very good for that time. Since then I´ve seen many times people around taking positions and building their careers no matter if they have any management basis or not. Obviously carrier growth is ´terra prohibida´ for me, so I changed my priorities and modified my objectives in a way that it became ´alternativa non grata´.

Lack of career ambitions doesn´t mean lack of ambitions at all but I´ll skip it now. In the end, I have a Dream - a Backup solution, an Alternative of Everything. This my Dream I would describe like that: