Houston Cellular Telephone Co. announced that Donald Kovalevich has joined the company as its new president and general manager. He has an extensive sales and market background, the company said, from his brand management experience at Proctor and Gamble with food and paper product divisions.
Houston Cellular is a partnership of American Cellular Communications and Lin Broadcasting Corp.
Bill Becker has been appointed area manager of PageMart Inc.’s Northern California market. Becker will oversee customer service, sales, distribution and general operations for PageMart’s branches in San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento. Before joining PageMart, Becker worked in the marketing and sales management division of Siemens.
PageMart also has appointed Graham K. Jones to the newly created position of manager of systems engineering. Jones will design and implement PageMart’s radio paging systems in domestic and international markets. Jones joins PageMart after 24 years with Motorola Inc. and a previous job as project manager-engineer for D&L Communications, a subcontractor to Ericsson GE Mobile Communications Inc.
Also joining PageMart is Francis Holquin, as area manager for San Antonio. Holquin will oversee total sales, profitability and customer service for the San Antonio office. PageMart will open a regional sales and service center in San Antonio in mid-November to help expand service to border Mexican cities.
Qualcomm Inc. has promoted Allen Salmasi to president of the company’s wireless telecommunications division. Salmasi has been senior vice president and general manager of that division for the last four years.
The wireless division designs, develops, markets, sells and licenses network equipment and subscriber products and components for Qualcomm’s proprietary Code Division Multiple Access technology.
Salmasi joined the company in 1988 as a board member and vice president of planning and development. Before joining the company, he founded and operated Omninet Corp. He also worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1979 to 1984, holding technical and management positions in the development of NASA’s Land Mobile Satellite Service program.
James J. Boyce has been named chief operating officer of InterDigital Communications Corp., where he will be responsible for all operations of the company, including sales, marketing, engineering and manufacturing.
Prior to joining InterDigital, Boyce was chief executive officer and director of V Band Corp., a manufacturer of high density communications equipment for the financial services industry. He was also vice president of manufacturing for Bunker Ramo Corp., a division of Allied Signal Corp.
Edward Bachner has been appointed vice president of engineering at The Antenna Co. He will be responsible for directing product development and applications. He has more than 25 years of experience in the design of mobile communications systems.
Based in Itasca, Ill., The Antenna Co. is a manufacturer of wireless communications systems and accessories. The company operates three international offices distributing its products in 35 countries.
Positive Communications Inc. said it has hired two new employees. Mike Myers has been named general manager for the Midwestern United States, while Paul Vittimberga has been hired as new product manager for the company.
In his new position, Myers will handle retail support, merchandising and sales for that region. He formerly was national retail manager for American Paging and was a regional sales manager for Spartus Corp.
Vittimberga’s duties will include responsibility for the business and marketing of a new line of wireless products. He previously was assistant product manager for Octel Communications Corp., a California-based voice mail company. He began his career at Citibank Mastercard/Visa, creating new product ideas, researching product appeal, developing pilot test plans and managing development.
Jean Coppenbarger, marketing communications manager of MobileComm, BellSouth Corp.’s nationwide paging business, has been elected chairwoman of The Paging Services Council. She has been with MobileComm since 1988, and coordinates all advertising, marketing and public relations for the company.
The Paging Services Council was created in 1991 as a public relations task force for the Personal Communications Industry Association. As chairwoman, Coppenbarger will be in charge of efforts to increase public awareness of pagers. She was involved in the development of the industry’s first nationwide alphanumeric messaging service and has been a key figure in coordinating marketing and public relations efforts for introducing the wireless messaging capabilities in Apple Computer Inc.’s Newton.
Bell Atlantic Mobile has appointed Ellen C. Wolf vice president of finance and planning, and chief financial officer at the company.
In this position, Wolf will have overall responsibility for Bell Atlantic Mobile’s financial operations, business planning and development, and she will oversee the company’s information systems.
Wolf joined Bell Atlantic in 1987 as director of accounting and financial integration. Since 1993, she has served as executive director of strategic planning and business development. She negotiated the contract for the company’s joint venture with Nynex Mobile Communications Inc.
Before joining Bell Atlantic, Wolf worked for Deloitte Haskins and Sells. Bell Atlantic Mobile is a subsidiary of Philadelphia-based Bell Atlantic Corp.
Steve Blosser, vice president of business development at Ericsson GE Mobile Communications Inc., announced he is retiring after more than 35 years with the company.
Blosser began his career with GE as a technical engineer in land mobile radio. Blosser’s contributions to the industry include developing a vertical market segmentation method, called the Pipeline Process, that allows various components of the business to focus on one essential goal, winning.
Blosser also introduced progressive sales proposal techniques that maximize proposal activities by the sales force. He will serve as a consultant for Ericsson through April 1995.
Steven R. Rand has joined RadioMail Corp. as vice president of sales and marketing. RadioMail is a two-way messaging service for mobile computer users.
Rand joined the San Mateo, Calif., company in the newly created position after two years as a private consultant for interactive technology. Rand previously served as vice president of sales for SkyPix Corp., president of INR Technologies and vice president of sales for James B. Lansing Sound Corp.
Columbia Spectrum Management has appointed Caroline Baldwin Kahl as general counsel, and Bette D. Butler as controller.
Kahl is from the Washington, D.C. law firm of Bryan Cave, where she represented cellular and paging companies, broadcasters and emerging technology entities. Her areas of concentration include mergers and acquisitions, disposition of paging and cellular stations, vendor and intercarrier agreements, financing and secured transaction arrangements, federal regulatory compliance counseling and the formation and management of corporations and partnerships.
Butler has more than 14 years of experience in telecommunications and was vice president-controller of Dispatch Communications Inc., a nationwide provider of specialized mobile radio service.
She was involved in the company’s start-up, handled consolidation of acquisitions and prepared for implementation of enhanced SMR. Butler’s previous experience includes five years as a senior manager with Ernst & Young, McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. and the accounting firm of Laventhol & Horwath.
