New Wave Media

Aqua Comms DAC, the operator of Ireland’s first dedicated subsea fiber-optic network interconnecting New York, Dublin and London, has appointed Nigel Bayliff as its new Chief Executive Officer. 

 

A global telecom industry veteran of 25-plus years’ experience, Bayliff joined Aqua Comms in October, 2016, replacing the company’s interim CEO, Greg Varisco, who remains a senior executive of Aqua Comms.

 

Prior to joining Aqua Comms, Bayliff was advisor and consultant to cable development, private equity and government clients in the industry, and Vice-Chairman of the United Nations joint task force that examined the gathering of disaster mitigation and climate information from the global web of undersea cable systems. He also served as CEO and a board member of Huawei Marine Networks, which he led from a start-up to initial success in the subsea cable construction industry while introducing several major, technological advances into the marketplace. Prior to this, he was a member of the executive team of FLAG Telecom where he served as an officer and deputy chairman for a number of group companies. At FLAG, Bayliff was responsible for the construction and operation of the FLAG Global Network, which encompasses 65,000 km of submarine cable systems and provides carrier-grade connectivity services to 40 countries.

 

In addition, Bayliff held senior roles at NTL (now Virgin Media) and Cable & Wireless/Mercury Communications (now Vodafone). In 2006 he was elected as a Fellow of the UK Institute of Engineering Technology. A chartered engineer, he earned a Bachelor of Science honors degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Essex University, studied international development at INSEAD, Paris, and strategic management at Ashridge Executive Education in the UK.