Gerassim Slavov, Novatel CEO: The change is constant

Gerasim Slavov is a manager with twenty years of worldwide telecommunications expertise, having worked for A1 in Bulgaria and Belarus, Vodafone in Azerbaijan, and Deutsche Telekom in Albania and Bulgaria. Prior to joining the telecommunications industry, he was one of the founders and the creative director of Leo Burnett's Bulgarian office. Master of European Studies from the University of Limerick (Ireland) and Master of Business Administration from the University of Lincoln (Great Britain).

Gerasim Slavov is the executive director of Novatel, one of the major providers of telecom and ICT services.

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BGNES: Thank you for accepting our invitation for this interview! You are well acquainted with telecom companies in Europe and Bulgaria. What challenges does Europe face and what are they in Bulgaria?

Gerassim Slavov: Thank you for having me here! Well, the challenges are not one and two - they are constant challenges. It’s a very fast changing world. The technologies change at very great speed. So, keeping up with this speed is always a huge challenge. The huge competition, particularly in Europe – it’s a very segmented market with many players on the market. So that would be another challenge. And the constant drive to innovate, the constant drive to be ahead of the games is something that I would point out as an important task in front of all – not only telecom companies, but all companies, related to innovations and digitalization and the modern world.

BGNES: Can Bulgaria be competitive in this regard?

Gerassim Slavov: Oh, yes - definitely, definitely! We do have a huge pool of talent. We have very many bright people – many of them are working in the country and are creating many extremely successful world-class companies, so I am very positive about that. Bulgaria is very competitive and can be competitive.

BGNES: What does high-quality ICT infrastructure accompanied by flexible pricing mean?

Gerassim Slavov: Ah! OK, that’s a nice marketing sentence, I would say. Um, the information and communication technology is one very fast developing area and is an area, which practically touches upon everyone – every single person, every single business. Everything what we do. This is a constantly evolving system. This is constantly trying to come up with new ideas, with ways to optimize services, with new services. And, of course, this needs to be priced at a competitive level, because as we said in the beginning, competition is really, really huge.

BGNES: Why is this indicated as one of the main requirements for a good telecommunications development in a country?

Gerassim Slavov: We always have to keep in mind what customers want . This is driving motto, driving force – call it whatever you want. Customer do want a reliable service of high quality – just to put it in one sentence – this is it. This is what we are trying to deliver at every single point.

BGNES: All business players on the market are trying to be at the top of new technologies, clearly focusing on cloud services, artificial intelligence, automation. But those things are also bring risks, especially Artificial Intelligence. Tell me about the biggest risks.

Gerassim Slavov: Yes, I was just going to point that cloud services they don’t bring any risk. What the buzz word these days – the Artificial Intelligence. You know – the opinion is split. Some people say that this is a great achievement and bright new feature expects us. Some others say that there are major risks in AI. Me personally – I do not know. I cannot say. I cannot subscribe to the either of the options. I tend to believe, or maybe I want to believe if that there are no risks, that this is just a huge leap in technological advancement, not just an innovation, but a major leap – like the Internet was in the beginning of the 90s, but I don’t know. As you remember, maybe a couple of months ago, one of the chief engineers of Google, in fact the person, who worked and who developed the artificial intelligence of Google quit the company, because he wanted to be able to freely talk about the risks of his creation. And he wanted to be free of any corporate obligations for that matter. So, this one person, who thinks that there is a risk and this one person certainly knows more about AI than I do, but at the same time, of course, he admitted that there are great benefits in his work, great benefits in what he has created, but there are also risks associated. I can only say that we will see.

BGNES: You know that there will be meetings in the UN and EU for regulation of this. What kind of regulation you think is needed?

Gerassim Slavov: I think, nobody knows. I think we are in a process of “trial and error”. It’s a big global brain storming what to do with that. I think there is no given solution, there are ideas, which are tossed around and I hope that the decision-making bodies in the area of regulation will come with optimal scenario for that.

BGNES: A new market niche opened with the introduction of the so-called blockchain technologies. Let's explain. What are they exactly?

Gerassim Slavov: I am not the biggest expert in the world of blockchain so probably I am not the right person to ask this question to, but I wouldn’t say that it’s a niche. It’s becoming a mainstream business. It is a technology, which has evolved greatly from the very recent moment of its inception or its introduction on the market. It’s evolving and it’s becoming more and more widespread. So, I think this is of the areas where the potential is huge.

BGNES: And now we will turn to green energy. This is an increasingly topical issue. Israel has unveiled plans to build an underwater electricity cable that will run alongside the Mediterranean coast and offer the ability to connect to power grids in Europe, meanwhile providing internet connectivity. A 150 km cable will carry electricity from solar farms. Is this the future of green energy and green internet?

Gerassim Slavov: Well, if this is the only future, I doubt, but definitely the submarine cables, they are not new. We know that the first one was laid between Europe and America in the 19th century already. So, if you look at the map of the globe you will see that the planet, the sea beds of the planet are covered with submarine cables, carrying different signals. It is a major way of transporting data and of connecting different points. So, this will continue. New cables be laid, existing cables will be replaced, because they have a certain lifespan, of course – and, yeah! Why not? I don’t know how particularly green the submarine cables are, but I wouldn’t see them as a major polluting item, either.

BGNES: Because they are from solar farms. That’s why.

Gerassim Slavov: The electricity, coming via these cables has a green origin. And I don’t see a reason why not transporting various things on a cable or on a duct.

BGNES: You said this is only one of the things. Could you mention some other types of green energy products that will come up.

Gerassim Slavov: Ah, again – you are asking me to make a prediction! I am not very good at predictions. I can predict very well the past, not the future. The share of the green energy worldwide is clearly increasing and it is increasing at a very heart-warming rate. And it’s very good to see when more and more solar energy, wind energy is becoming part of the mainstream. I do hope that this tendency will continue, because as we clearly see these days in Europe the heat waves are proven definitely to be a result of human activities, of climate warming. If we do not take clear and sustainable and consistent measures, we are doomed to have major climate problems.

BGNES: Does Bulgaria have the potential for technological development using green technologies?

Gerassim Slavov: Oh, yes – I thinks so, yes! And in Bulgaria also the share of green energy is increasing over the years. So, yes – definitely. We do have all the nature resources for that, we do have sun, we have possibilities for developing wind energy. /BGNES