Open Range Communications (www.openrangecomm.com), a wireless broadband services provider to rural America, today announced the appointment of William H. Pearson to Senior Vice President of Marketing. Mr. Pearson has served in senior marketing, business development, and strategic planning roles with major domestic and international cellular telephone, cable television, and Internet related companies, including USWest, where he formed a marketing department for the initial deployment of cellular telephone service.
In making the announcement of Mr. Pearson’s appointment, J. Curt Hockemeier, President of Open Range said,” We’re extremely fortunate to have attracted a marketing and business development professional of Bill Pearson’s caliber to Open Range. Throughout his career in cellular telephone, cable television, and Internet-related businesses, Bill has exhibited an ability to strategically develop, grow, and maintain customers in highly competitive marketplaces. His addition to our senior team will allow us to move even faster in bringing high quality, high-speed wireless communications products and services to markets which have been ignored for too long.”
Mr. Pearson has most recently been an independent advisor to competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), cellular telephone companies, cable television companies, wireless ISP’s, hedge funds, and private equity funds, in the U.S. and Europe, including Song Networks, a Scandinavian CLEC, UPC Polska, RCN, Adelphia Communications, and Insight Communications.
Prior to consulting, Mr. Pearson was involved in the European telecommunications business, co-founding CompleTel, a local fiber-based CLEC in France. Through a series of subsequent mergers and acquisitions, he became President and COO, CEO, and eventually Chairman of the Board, leading restructuring and fundraising efforts throughout. Mr. Pearson was also Senior Vice President of Marketing and Planning for Telewest, which became the largest cable television company in the United Kingdom.
Mr. Pearson began his career with USWest Inc., where he held a variety of senior management positions, having overseen the formation of a marketing department for the initial deployment of cellular telephone service, heading strategic planning, serving on the Boards of USWest Paging and Coastel, and managing the Rocky Mountain Region, comprised of six branch offices representing approximately 4 million pops.
While a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mr. Pearson was a standout in basketball, and went on to earn an MBA from the University of Minnesota. He has taught MBA-level Marketing Classes at the University of Wisconsin Business School, and has lectured on the Information Superhighway at Denver University.
About Open Range Communications
Open Range Communications is a provider of wireless telephone and high-speed Internet broadband services to rural American communities via a robust national WiMAX network. Open Range will serve more than 500 communities through licensed spectrum with a $267 million Broadband Access Loan from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Utilities Program (RDUP), together with $95 million in private equity funding. The provision of wireless broadband services to unserved, and underserved communities by Open Range will result in improved security, economic growth, education, and quality of life, to an estimated six million Americans who otherwise would not be able to participate in this age of constant communications. For more information about Open Range, visit www.openrangecomm.com.
