AST Group is a holding company that was founded in 2002 by Ali Sulaiman Al-Taher, an Emirati entrepreneur and engineer by profession. Mr. Al-Taher had by then spent 15 years working for 3 of the top 100 companies in the region, namely DUBAL, ETISALAT and THURAYA Satellite Telecommunications Company. He had also worked with and received formal training from top 500 global companies such as GE, Ericsson, Alcatel, Siemens, Motorola, Hughes Network Systems, Hughes Software Systems and Boeing Satellite Systems to nam. During his career, he had been exposed in varying degrees, to several engineering disciplines including Electrical, Electronics, Electromechanical, Instrumentation, Telecommunication (Terrestrial, Cellular and Satellite), Information Technology and Computer Science.He had been involved in the roll out of GSM Systems in early 90's. Thereafter he was involved in the Design, Development, Testing and Commercial roll out of a large scale and complex Mobile Satellite System (MSS), namely the THURAYA Satellite Telecommunications System (THURAYA). At THURAYA, he was for 2 years the lead Systems Engineer managing a team of THURAYA resident engineers and consultants at the Hughes Network Systems facility in Germantown, Maryland. He was later responsible for end-to-end system testing and acceptance before assuming the role of Products and Services Development Manager. By then Mr. Al-Taher had gained immense first hand knowledge on the Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) sector as well as being a subject matter expert in some specific areas such as Mobile Satellite Communications and GSM standards.He had also established a wealth of business contacts that was as wide as the THURAYA footprint and realized how wide the gap is between the perfectionist engineer's world and the imperfect business world. He had concluded that the success or failure of any business is a function of that gap. It is with this thought and the aforementioned expertise that AST Group was found "To identify and deliver the RIGHT product to the market, FAST".
