A new company led by industry veteran Allen Salmasi is poised to bid in the entrepreneurial auction for personal communications services licenses, with plans to build a network based on Code Division Multiple Access technology.
NextWave Telecom Inc. is headed by Salmasi, who recently resigned from Qualcomm Inc., where he was president of the company’s CDMA Wireless Telecommunications Division. Salmasi is chairman and chief executive officer of Washington, D.C.-based NextWave. As such, he joins the ranks of other well known executives like John DeFeo, who left corporate positions to try their hand at PCS. DeFeo resigned as president and CEO of U S West NewVector Group Inc. last fall to head up U.S. AirWaves Inc., a designated entity also planning to bid in the PCS auction.
“The entrepreneurial PCS auctions, coupled with telecommunications deregulation and CDMA as a breakthrough technology, represent an immense opportunity that comes along only once in a lifetime,” Salmasi said.
Salmasi also served on Qualcomm’s board of directors and was chief strategic officer during the launch of CDMA and the development of CDMA standards and commercial products.
Salmasi’s departure was amicable and Qualcomm may make a small, passive investment in NextWave, said Molly Foerster, Qualcomm director of investor relations. Salmasi currently holds about a 1.8 percent stock interest in Qualcomm.
Telecommunications veteran Janice Obuchowski is NextWave’s president. She founded and is president of Freedom Technologies Inc., a telecom research and consulting firm that also provides PCS auction planning. Obuchowski formerly headed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, was telecommunications adviser to former President George Bush and was senior adviser to Mark Fowler, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Obuchowski holds a seat on the Qualcomm board.
The auction, originally scheduled for Aug. 29, has been stayed by a court challenge. Obuchowski said she hopes the matter will be resolved soon. “We’re ready to bid when the gun sounds, and that’s the bottom line,” she said.
NextWave will compete in the auction through its wholly-owned subsidiary, NextWave Personal Communications Inc. CodeWorks, another NextWave subsidiary, provides CDMA-based RF engineering, network planning, architectural trade-off studies and other services. CodeWorks will provide CDMA network engineering services to its strategic partners at both 800 MHz cellular and 1.9 GHz PCS bands, along with software application services.
Salmasi explained,”NextWave can most efficiently and cost effectively design, deploy and operate C and F Block PCS networks that will be implemented in conjunction with our strategic partners.”
Before joining Qualcomm, Salmasi founded Omninet Corp., which developed the OmniTracs satellite-based, wireless positioning and communications service. Qualcomm bought Omninet in 1989. Salmasi was with Qualcomm for nearly seven years.
Qualcomm has not announced plans to replace Salmasi, but has reorganized the Wireless division into an executive office comprised of the division’s continuing leaders, Ron Foerster, senior vice president of wireless infrastructure, Paul Jacobs, vice president of subscriber products, and Chris Simpson, senior vice president of international marketing.
