About Telecom Directions LLC   

Henry Baird is an independent consultant to the telecommunications industry.  He has been actively involved in the positioning and start-up of telecommunications products and services since 1982. His company, Telecom Directions, delivers needs analysis, forward-looking system planning, and custom market assessments across all telecom industry verticals, including military and civil governments, and new ventures, as well as to end users in health care, insurance and finance. His telecom industry clients have included product and marketing groups at AT&T, IBM, Lucent, Siemens Business Communications, BellSouth, Sprint, Fujitsu, and GTE Northwest Business Systems, as well as a number of start-up organizations throughout the telecommunications industry.  He also serves as the principal of the Telecom Directions Group, a consortium of consulting firms who jointly bid complex projects.

Projects have included:

• Voice network development options for the Technology and Operations Section of the Information Technology Services Division, King County, Washington.   (Telecom Directions Group)
• Pricing study of PSTN intelligent network services, on behalf of Illuminet, Inc. (now Network Solutions).
• Value chain analysis of fiber optic deployment trends in North America, Europe and the Far East for private client.
• Evaluation and assessment of voice network development options and recovery of Qwest overbillings for the Seattle-King County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
• Development of scenarios to optimize PBX configurations for the regional offices of Zenith Administrators, a subsidiary of Union Labor Life Insurance Company, in Seattle, Portland, Spokane, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
• Voice network switch and infrastructure evaluation and analysis of development options, Strategic Weapons Facility, U.S. Navy Submarine Base, Bangor Washington.

He served as editor of Telecommunications Product Review & CPE Strategies, a national telecom trends newsletter, from 1994 to 1997, and ANI Update from 1991 to 1993, a newsletter that addressed regulatory developments and technical issues in the deployment of calling line identification services on the public telephone network.  

He has also served as director of the Communications Systems Management program at Seattle Pacific University from 1992 to 1994 and is a contributor to Newton’s Telecom Dictionary.   

He has co-developed and presented seminars on premises cabling ownership issues in conjunction with the Building Owners and Managers Association, and he has spoken to industry groups on premises and network fiber distribution and deployment, desktop computer telephony, and trends in the development of network management systems.  

In addition, he has published articles on general telecom topics in the Puget Sound Business Journal and The Office, and he has written various articles on special topics, including a discussion of emergency 911 services for Government Technology, and industry trends for Voice Processing Magazine and TeleProfessional. In 1996 he published a national demand study entitled Buying Trends in Telemanagement Software, and in October 2002 he published the second edition of  The Telecom Directions List of Seattle Area Network Access Providers, an annual, annotated “who’s who” listing of Seattle area voice and data network access services, which is available on the Telecom Directions web site.  

Prior to opening his consulting practice in 1987, he held management positions at Satellite Business Systems, a telecommunications subsidiary of I.B.M., from 1983 to 1986, and Enhanced TeleManagement, a Minneapolis-based supplier of telephone company-based centrex-type services to business in the downtown Seattle area, in 1986 and early 1987.

He holds an M.B.A. from the University of Washington in marketing and information systems (1983), as well as a Masters in Technical Writing from the University of Iowa (1978). He is certified as a Convergence Technology Technician by the MultiMedia Telecommunications Association, and is a member of both the Project Management Institute and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants. In 2001, he was elected to a two-year term on the STC Board of Directors. He is also a member of the Project Management Institute.