OBITUARY

Ron Spithill died on 7/12/2025

Ron Spithill OAM FTSE passed away on 7/12/2025/. He was elected to the Academy in 2007 in recognition of his long-term leadership of telecommunications companies around the world. An engineer with global expertise, he led the operations of Alcatel in Australia, China and France.

He was an active member of the NSW Division over his time at ATSE, also participating in the Education Forum from 2008 to 2018, and the Digital Futures Forum in 2021. He was involved in the nominations of multiple new Fellows and attended many ATSE events.

Post-retirement, he also had a personal interest in the early detection of glaucoma, taking on the role of President of the Board of Glaucoma Australia from 2014 to 2019.

In 2014, Mr Spithill was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his services to the telecommunications industry.

Ron Spithill is an Australian telecommunication engineer who has led the operations of Alcatel, a global company with outstanding success, first in Australia, subsequently in China and Asia, and ultimately at head office in Paris where he was a member of the nine person Executive Committee and had world-wide responsibility for marketing the company's products and services. Individual contracts were frequently in the billion-dollar range. He occupied virtually every technical role in the company in a forty-year career, and two of his notable achievements were the establishment of Alcatel's Submarine Cable manufacturing facility at Botany Bay, and his Presidency of Alcatel Bell Shanghai (ABS) in China. The Botany Bay facility was Australia's largest exporter of high technology equipment in the 1990s shipping $ 1 billion of optical fibre submarine cable. ABS became China's major supplier of Telecommunication services and equipment which he grew in three years to a turnover of$ A 4 billion. Ron has now retired from his Executive role at Alcatel and returned to Australia. He has since been appointed to the Board of Telecom New Zealand and appointed as an Advisor to Macquarie Bank on Telecommunications matters. He regularly participates in the Australian Davos Connection annual Leadership Retreat and was among the Top 100 Australians who have been based overseas as judged by Advance Australia.