CROWN COMMUNICATIONS
John P. Kelly was named chief operating officer of Crown Communications, the domestic operating subsidiary of Crown Castle International Corp. Robert Crown will continue as president and chief executive officer of Crown Communications for the next several months, during which time Kelly will assume responsibilities for managing the day-to-day operations of the company. Kelly previously was president and COO of Atlantic Cellular Co. in Providence, R.I., and has served as president and COO of Hawaiian Wireless Inc. Prior to Atlantic, Kelly was general manager of the Pacific region for GTE Mobilnet Inc., responsible for engineering, operations, marketing and customer service in four states.
ORANGE
Orange plc appointed Kenny Hirschhorn to the newly created position of group director of strategy, research and development and futurology. Hirschhorn is a member of the company’s executive board and reports to Hans Snook, group managing director. Hirchhorn took a two-year career break before joining Orange. Prior to that, he spent 17 years working in several divisions at Motorola Inc., including cellular. By 1990 Hirschhorn was vice president of personal communications services operations, based in Hong Kong, and responsible for the development and deployment of new technologies throughout Asia.
TELFORT
Terrence Valeski joined Telfort as a director of the Mobility & Strategy Division of British Telecommunications plc. Telfort is a joint venture between BT and The Dutch National Railway. Previously, Valeski was president and general manager of Pacific Bell Mobile Services, SBC Communications Inc.’s personal communications service company in California and Nevada. In his new position, Valeski is responsible for the launch of an 1800 MHz Global System for Mobile communications network and overall business.
METAWAVE
Bruce C. Edwards, president and chief executive officer of Powerwave Technologies Inc., and David A. Twyver, former president of Nortel Wireless Networks, were appointed to Metawave Communications Corp.’s board of directors. Since 1996, Edwards has served as president and CEO of Powerwave, which provides radio-frequency power amplifiers for wireless networks. He was senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer for personal computer company AST Research Inc. from 1988 to 1994, when he was promoted to executive vice president and named to the AST board of directors. Twyver has more than 25 years of experience in the telecom industry. He now serves on the board of directors of Teledesic Corp., where he was CEO until his retirement last year. He was president of Nortel Wireless Networks from 1993 to 1996, during which time the Northern Telecom Inc. division grew into a multibillion-dollar business. Twyver spent more than 20 years with Nortel, and held senior management positions in several of the company’s research and development and global product organizations. Twyver also is serving as a director of Innova Corp.
INTEK
Robert M. Hardy was appointed to fill the previously vacant position of president of Intek Global USA. Hardy, a 20-year veteran of AT&T Corp., was interim vice president and general manager of ADE Software Corp. Before that, he held a similar position with Beechwood Data Systems. From 1987 to 1991, he was president and chief executive officer of Compucom Inc. As president, Hardy will be responsible for Intek’s U.S. operations, including RoameR One airtime sales, Midland USA sales and distribution and Data Express’ automatic vehicle-location and data product lines.
CTIA
Dennis Francis, executive vice president and chief technical officer for Vanguard Cellular Systems Inc., was named chairman of the Chief Technical Officers Caucus for the Cellular Telephone Industry Association. Francis served on CTIA’s CTO council for four years prior to his appointment. Before joining Vanguard in 1992, Francis was vice president of network operations for Southwestern Bell’s Washington/ Baltimore market.
WIRELESSNORTH
WirelessNorth brought Gary Howard on board to head its engineering and operations division, as senior principal radio-frequency systems engineer. Howard has years of experience working with Code Division Multiple Access technology, most recently with Sprint Spectrum L.P., where he helped build the company’s network in the Midwest. Prior to that, he designed a spread-spectrum wireless local area network for Honeywell Inc. Howard also spent five years with AirTouch Cellular as an RF engineer. Before joining AirTouch, Howard formed his own company called Howard Communications to provide RF signal modulation and propagation performance enhancement.
PREFERRED NETWORKS
Gary Park was named president of Preferred Networks Inc.’s Network Services Division. Previously, he was vice president of sales. Before joining PNI in 1996, Park was vice president for Mobile Telecommunication Technologies Corp./SkyTel Communications Corp. from 1992 to 1996. Park last year was responsible for refocusing PNI’s sales efforts toward supporting large wireless companies.
