Juan Manuel Wilches

Juan Manuel Wilches’s work experience began in Colombia in 2000 as Advisor for the Telecommunications Regulation Commission – CRT where, for a period of almost 7 years, he led and advised several projects on telecommunications regulation, carrying out activities such as the definition of interconnection conditions, termination rates and conflict resolution, as well as performing market analysis, and developing models for fixed and mobile network costing.

In 2010 he was contacted to be part of the team that created the National Spectrum Agency (ANE) in Colombia, joining as Senior Advisor to the Director General. He was subsequently promoted to Deputy Director for Spectrum Management and Planning, a position in which, with his team, he developed the National Spectrum Management Policy adopted in 2012 and the comprehensive spectrum management and planning framework currently in place in Colombia.

His recognized experience in regulation and spectrum management led him to be appointed by the Minister of Information and Communications Technologies as Commissioner in 2013 and Executive Director in 2014 for the Communications Regulation Commission (CRC)

Mr Wilches has represented Colombia in several international meetings such as the ITU-R Study Groups and Working Parties, as well as the World Radiocommunications Conference in 2012. He also has been President of the Spectrum Management Group at the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (OAS-CITEL).

Mr Wilches has a Bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia and an MBA from the Schulich School of Business, York University, in Toronto, Canada, where he graduated with honours in 2009. During his stay in Canada, he worked at Kazam Group as a consultant in telecommunications, where he specialised in wireless communications.