Speakers

Mike Robinson has over 40 years of IT/OT networking, telecommunications and security experience. Half of this experience was with Service Providers making him uniquely qualified for the kinds of issues electric utilities have in operating their own expansive telecom infrastructure. Mike grew his experience to include Outside Plant Engineering, Central Office, Planning and ultimately becoming Vice President of Engineering for a mid-sized telecom service provider.  TXU/Oncor, the largest electric utility in Texas, acquired that telecom company and Mike became their Chief Architect managing all communications aspects of the electric utility. He was responsible for all OT related infrastructure including WAN, substation LAN, field operations including AMI and distribution grid control, LMR, and Call Center Operations. TXU pioneered the use of MPLS by utilities and his WAN architecture is still used by many utilities. Cisco Systems recruited Mike to be their electric utility industry subject matter expert where he helped utilities worldwide deal with WAN, substation, FAN and security challenges. World Wide Technologies then recruited Mike as their Solutions Architect for their Utilities and Energy practice where he predominantly focuses on private 4G/5G solutions.   Mike works with mission critical 4G/5G solutions includes Core, spectrum, RAN, and UE strategies and planning. Mike leads customer engagements, design and security workshops, RFP responses, and Business Impact Analysis planning. Mike has written articles regarding 4G/5G issues and solutions, the need for utilities to adopt independent SIMs, the role of SD-WAN in utility OT environments, migrating to Segment Routing, and timing architectures for grid and comms needs.