The Foundation Directors

Malcolm Matson

Malcolm has dedicated the past 30 years to promoting the concept of Open Public Local Access Networks in one form or another. A pioneer of broadband in the UK in the early 1980s, he subsequently founded COLT telecom, Europe’s first all-fibre network planned as an OPLAN but abandoned by investors in the heat of the 1990s telecoms-mania.

A graduate of the University of Nottingham and Harvard Business School, he is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world on behalf of the OPLAN Foundation as its Executive Director. He remains a director of OpenPlanet Ltd www.open-planet.net which is working with communties around the world to help facilitate and fund OPLAN developments.


Juergen Neumann

Juergen started working with information technology in 1984 and since then has been looking for ways to deploy IT in useful ways for organisations and society. He has worked for major German and international companies and many non-profit projects.

In 2002 he co-founded www.freifunk.net, a campaign for spreading knowledge and social networking about free and ‘open’ networks – which is globally regarded as one of the most successful community-projects in this field. Juergen fully supports The OPLAN Foundation and had primary responsibility for building the Foundation’s web presence and network of relationships with OPLANs around the world.


Michael Taylor

Michael Taylor was called to the English Bar in 1986, following which he served as in-house Counsel to a public UK construction company. Since 1990 he has held a number of high level positions as director of legal and regulatory affairs with various leading telecommunications companies around the world. He is widely respected in telecoms-regulatory circles and continues to offer legal and regulatory and advice principally to clients in the telecoms, media and technology sectors.


Alexandra Noble

Alexandra Noble is a Member of the Securities Institute with over 25 years banking and fund management experience with some of the world’s leading financial institutions.  She is currently a senior executive search consultant in the financial sector and is deeply committed to the OPLAN vision.


Alan Riley

Alan Riley is an organisation consultant and, through his own practice, works on change, communication and culture management with major corporations in various sectors. In his earlier career he was the director of corporate communications for a large UK public company as well as working with major PR firms. He has known and worked with Malcolm Matson over the past two decades.

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