About Ray Horak

Ray Horak pondering the future of telecommunications

Ray Horak is the President of The CONTEXT Corporation, an independent consultancy internationally recognized for the development and delivery of world-class services relative to telecommunications and data communications systems and network technologies, services and management systems--set in the CONTEXT of the regulatory and business environment. Mr. Horak has considerable experience in litigation support, having served as an expert consultant and expert witness in a number of cases involving breach of contract, product/service misrepresentation, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and intellectual property (patent; copyright, and trademark/service mark infringement).

Mr. Horak has spoken before tens of thousands of communications professionals through his public and private seminars, workshops and conference activities and has reached many more through occasional Webcasts and radio interviews. He is a contributor to leading industry trade publications and for several years wrote the popular In the Classroom column for the Commweb portal sponsored by CMP Media. He is a member of a number of Editorial Boards, including The Connectivity Management Handbook, The Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education, and The Prepaid Press, and was a Senior Consulting Editor for Newton’s Telecom Dictionary (12^th through 22^nd Editions). He also has served as Technical Editor for several book-length works, including Deploying Secure 802.11 Wireless Networks with Microsoft Windows, published by Microsoft Press (2003).He authored the best-selling Communications Systems and Networks, published by Wiley Publishing (1997, 2000, & 2002). In addition to the English language edition, the book has been published in Chinese, French, Indian and Italian. His most recent books are Telecommunications and Data Communications Handbook, published by Wiley-Interscience (2007), and Webster’s New World Telecom Dictionary (2007). He currently serves as the Technology Editor for Telecom Reseller newspaper.

Mr. Horak is a member of the faculties of Terrapinn and Network World Technical Seminars. He was an Adjunct Faculty member of The University of San Francisco (USF), McLaren Graduate School of Business, and now serves on the Board of Advisors. He also serves on the Advisory Committee of the Skagit Valley College (Mount Vernon, WA) Electronics/Telecommunications Technology Program. Certification Administrator (CA),

Prior to forming The Context Corporation, Mr. Horak was Vice President of Marketing & Sales for Communications Group Inc. (CGI). Previously, he spent seven years with CONTEL and various CONTEL subsidiaries, most recently acting as General Manager of CONTEL Executone in Houston, Texas. Prior to this position, Mr. Horak served as Vice President of CONTEL Tenant Services (which he founded), Assistant Vice President of CONTEL's Western Region, and Division Manager of Sales & Marketing for the Rocky Mountain Division. Mr. Horak also spent nine years with the Bell System, including Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, AT&T, and Bell Telephone Laboratories, in various general management and strategic planning capacities.

Mr. Horak holds an A.A from Del Mar College, and both B.B.A. and M.B.A. degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. He also is certified by the Electronics Technicians Association as a Fiber Optics Installer (FOI) and a Fiber Optics Technician (FOT).