Johannesburg Conference: 1-2 Oct 2019

 

 

Overview

RAG returns to South Africa thanks to MTN Group, who will host our October conference at their impressive facilities in Johannesburg. The conference is scheduled for Tuesday 1st and Wednesday 2nd October. All talks will be given in English. Attendance will be free for telcos and regulators, but based on the long lines of attendees for RAG Johannesburg 2017 (pictured left) we expect to fill the venue, so book your place as soon as possible.

 

Agenda

The conference will cover fraud, revenue assurance, cost management, nuisance calls, margin assurance, other kinds of business assurance, enterprise risk management and cybersecurity.

Unlike other conferences, we do not like to promise speakers until we are confident they will take part, and we do not like to promise presentation topics until we know which speaker will address them.

The draft agenda is updated each time a new speaker confirms they will participate. You can see the agenda below, or click here to open the document in a new window. Click on a speaker’s name to read their profile, or keep reading for more detail about the confirmed sessions.

 

Tuesday 1st October

  • Conference chairman and award-winning RAFM leader Tony Sani will open the conference with his introductory remarks.

  • Our Guest of Honour will be Kenyan RAFM expert Joseph Nderitu, who will give a keynote about ethics and integrity. Joseph has worked for a wide variety of telcos in Sub-Saharan Africa. He currently serves as the Head of RAFM for Vodacom Tanzania, which was subject to an unprecedented attack from the Tanzanian government earlier this year.

  • Leading managers from our hosts, MTN, will tell the audience about the various ways they tackle risks. MTN’s panel will include Nixon Wampamba, General Manager for Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management, Ernest Ketcha Ngassam, MTN Group General Manager for Information Security Architecture and Technical Excellence, and Nicholas Harris, General Manager of MTN Group’s Forensic Services.

  • Steffen Öftring, Revenue Assurance Director at SIGOS, will fly in from Germany to talk about the need to authentically recreate all aspects of the customer’s service in order to protect revenues, especially as those services become more elaborate thanks to massive investments in new infrastructure like 5G.

  • Well-known consultant and former Cell C manager Jacqueline Fick will discuss trends in fraud and investigation with a panel of experts. Her panellists will be:
    • Willie Hofmeyr, who has served as a Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions in South Africa since his 2001 appointment by President Thabo Mbeki;
    • Kallie Calitz of GBSD Technologies and formerly of the South African Police Service;
    • Chad Thomas, an expert in organised crime whose radio show Corruption Busters won the Best Daytime Radio Show category in the 2017 Liberty Radio Awards; and
    • Jaco de Jager, the CEO of the South African chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).

  • Vodacom Mozambique has incorporated the location of mobile phones into their controls to identify and prevent fraud by dealers. Tanki Letuka and Lourenço Francisco of Vodacom Mozambique’s RAFM team will give a presentation explaining how they did it.

  • The world is seeing a rise in certain types of frauds as calls become cheaper. The expert panellists discussing how the industry can respond include: Michaël Houis, Senior Business Development Manager at FraudBuster; and Arnd Baranowski, Chief Executive Officer of Oculeus.

  • Award-winning consultant Geoff Ibbett will tell the audience about the RAG Leakage Catalogue, the most comprehensive inventory of revenue and cost leakages for telcos, and how telcos can quickly benchmark their leakage coverage using the 10-Minute RAG Leakage Survey.

  • The theft of handsets and the swapping of SIMs are two of the most serious challenges faced by African fraud managers. Elgiva Sibisi and Faaiq Davids of MTN South Africa will talk about how they reduced both kinds of crime.

  • Ashwin Menon of Subex will give a talk with the title “Active Risk Intelligence: From Discrepancy to Business Impact”. His presentation will cover the urgent need for the risk frameworks to be remade to suit evolving business models, going beyond the traditional approach of reconciling CDRs in order to assure experiences, cash flows and partnerships in the world of 5G.

  • Amit Mehta, General Manager for MTN Group’s Internal Audit and Forensics, and Head of their Technology and Security Audit will join the cybersecurity panel discussion. Experienced security consultant and risk manager Vernon Kitay will be the panel moderater.

Wednesday 2nd October

  • Malebu Makgalemela, ERM Executive at Telkom, is an inspiring business leader who splits her time between coaching young people and building a formidable reputation for managing risks at telcos like Telkom, Cell C and MTN in addition to her work with the public sector. Inspiration for risk management will be the theme of her keynote.

  • In addition to chairing the conference, Tony Sani is also leading RAG’s global initiative to share wangiri fraud numbers using a blockchain ledger. Access to the ledger will be free for any telco or vendor who shares their data about wangiri attacks. Tony will brief the audience about progress with the first pilot of the blockchain technology and the number of telcos and vendors already enrolled to use it.

  • Bill LaRuffa of TEOCO will journey from the USA in order to share insights drawn from two decades of experience. Bill will talk will be the rising epidemic of automated nuisance calls, also known as ‘robocalls’, and why these robocalls are increasingly linked to fraud and the spoofing of A-party numbers.

  • The telecoms and financial sectors are coming together in ways that were previously unimaginable, leading to new kinds of risk and new compliance obligations. Joseph Nderitu will talk about the implications with Nasia Seria, General Manager for Risk and Compliance at MTN’s Mobile Financial Services division.

  • Julianne Mweheire, Director of Industry Affairs and Content at the Uganda Communications Commission, will draw on her considerable experience of the inter-operation of telcos for her presentation about the need to consider the consumer impact whilst addressing current challenges in the telecoms sector.

  • Switch-to-bill reconciliations are less important than they used to be, and changing business models mean that revenue assurance needs to adapt to survive. The development of RA will be discussed by a panel of experienced RA practitioners including Malekhase Moea, who leads the RAFM functions at Vodacom Lesotho, and Asem Abughazaleh, who was Director of RAFM at Etisalat Afghanistan before he joined LATRO Services. The panel will be moderated by Paul Davies, an experienced RA manager who has worked for Vodafone, Virgin Media, Cable & Wireless and Orange.

  • Bryan Rowe, Managing Director of Six Degrees, and Jason Tesh, Senior Manager for Carrier Services at MTN, will talk about the automated blocking of fraud.

  • Industry veterans will review the major learning points of the conference during our closing Wise Heads panel. Eric Priezkalns of RAG and Commsrisk will moderate the session, and the wise heads will include former Telkom fraud manager Ken Dickenson.

 

Location, Evening Entertainment, Hotels and Transportation

The conference will be held at MTN’s main offices in Johannesburg, South Africa. The address is: 216, 14th Avenue, Fairland, Roodepoort 2195. A map is shown below.

MTN will kindly allow the event to take place in their superb CoLab facility (pictured), with space for big presentations and breakout areas for smaller meetings to be held in parallel.

Attendees of RAG events are responsible for booking and paying for their own accommodation.

We recommend that everybody stay at The Fairway Hotel, on Setperk Road, Randpark (Randpark Golf Club), Johannesburg. RAG attendees staying at The Fairway will enjoy a significantly discounted single occupancy, per night rate of R1,210 for Premier rooms, R1,450 for Leisure rooms and R1,510 for Luxury rooms (plus service charges and taxes). The Fairway also offer four-bedroom villas which can be booked on an individual basis but, please note, you may be sharing with other RAG Joburg delegates unless you choose to book the entire villa. The per person per night rates are R1,270 for a room in a Garden Villa and R1,330 for a Golf Villa (plus service charges and taxes).

These rates also include breakfast. To obtain the discount, please book by contacting Reservations Supervisor Yvonne Ntsomotho at +27 11 478 8005 or at [email protected], and quote reference 72738 when making the booking.

RAG conference attendees staying at The Fairway will benefit from free transportation between The Fairway Hotel and conference venue in the morning and evening. The first coach will be ready to depart at 8:00am and the second at 8:15am on both Tuesday 1st and Wednesday 2nd October.

The return coach journey on Tuesday 1st October will depart at 9:00pm from the MTN campus to return delegates to The Fairway Hotel after the first evening’s social activity. Coaches will be provided after the conference at 6:00pm on Wednesday 2nd October to take RAG delegates from the MTN campus to the evening’s social activity, being held at La Rosa restaurant, for food and refreshments. They will then depart from La Rosa at 9:30pm to return delegates to The Fairway Hotel.

Here is a list of other local hotels. Any conference attendee choosing to stay at one of these hotels must make their own arrangements for transportation to MTN’s offices.

Delegates wishing to drive to the conference can take advantage of on-site parking at the MTN campus. Upon arrival, state that you are attending the RAG conference whereby security will direct you to a secure parking area.

As well as providing lunch and refreshments during each day, we will provide food, soft drinks and the opportunity to network each evening.

  • On the evening of October 1st we will enjoy a braai inside the superb facilities of MTN.

  • When the conference finishes on October 2nd, you are welcome to join us for free food and continuing conversation at La Rosa Mexican restaurant. The full address is: John Vorster Road, cnr Christiaan de Wet Road, Weltevreden Park, Roodepoort, 1709. RAG Joburg attendees will be transported after the conference by coach to the venue, and from the restaurant to The Fairway Hotel once festivities conclude.

 

Brochure

This printable PDF brochure for the conference was created on 27th September; you can download it from here or view it below. However, we always recommend that attendees check the agenda on this webpage for the most up to date schedule of speakers.

 

Free Registration for Telcos and Regulators

Employees of telcos or telecom regulators may attend RAG Johannesburg for free, so long as they register using the email address associated with their place of work; click here to register.

 

Attendance Options for Sponsors, Academics and Invited Guests

Sponsoring businesses may send their representatives to RAG Johannesburg. If your business is interested in participating in RAG events then please make your initial query through our contact form.

RAG allocates a limited number of complimentary seats for freelance consultants, subject matter experts, academics engaged in relevant research, and other industry leaders. To maintain a balanced audience, these seats will only be made available to specific named individuals. Invitations will be emailed in due course. If you wish to be added to the guest list you should contact a member of the RAG Committee, or else ask the host or one of the conference sponsors to forward your request.

One of the most important aspects of our conferences is what we call the ‘RAG Spirit’. We want attendees to feel relaxed and have the freedom to talk openly about the challenges they face. To protect the RAG Spirit, we reserve the right to decide who may attend on a case-by-case basis.

 

About Our Host and Sponsors

RAG is a not-for-profit enterprise, and telcos and regulators may attend our events for free, as do many specially invited experts. That means we rely on the generosity of the businesses that host our meetings and pay for everything from our web server to the coffee we serve attendees. We would like to thank the following businesses for contributions that have made this conference possible.

The Hosts

MTN

Gold Sponsors

iconectiv, Neural Technologies, SIGOS, Subex, Symmetry Solutions, TEOCO, WeDo Technologies

Silver Sponsors

Araxxe, FraudBuster, GBSD Technologies, LATRO Services, Oculeus, Six Degrees

Bronze Sponsors
4C Group, AdaptiveMobile Security, CSG, Mobileum, Trustonic

If you would like to host a future RAG event or if you want to learn about sponsorship opportunities then please get in touch. We will be glad to hear from you!

© Risk & Assurance Group