Yesterday was Urban Gillström’s first day on the job as group president of global sales at Comverse, and he’s already planning his next step: meeting with customers in the field.

His experience shows he’s well-suited for the task. Gillström worked in a number of senior management positions at Ericsson for the last 15 years, including president of the Ericsson Enterprise business unit and president of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications (USA). His base of operations over the years has ranged from North Carolina to Sweden, with stints in Latin America and Singapore as well.

One of the things that appealed to him about Comverse is its strength in regions around the world, and diversity, of course, always helps decrease exposure in areas where the economy isn’t doing so well. Plus, Comverse has an “excellent” product in the billing arena, he added. “The way I see it, Comverse is ahead of the curve” when it comes to prepaid, postpaid, converged solutions, voice mail, messaging and value-adds, he said.

Worldwide, Comverse serves more than 500 network operators. In the United States, Comverse has relationships with all the major wireless operators, as well as Tier 2 service providers. In the big scheme of things, “the United States is extremely important” as a Comverse market, he said.

Comverse’s U.S. headquarters is in New York. Parent Comverse Technology grabbed headlines a couple years ago after its former CEO, Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, fled the country and was wanted on stock-option backdating charges. Last summer, The Wall Street Journal chronicled Alexander’s escapades, including how he flew some 200 guests from New York and Israel to Namibia for his son’s bar mitzvah. The story also noted that Comverse had sued Alexander for fraud and other claims.