Cometa goes from Brilliant to Weis

Emerging Wi-Fi wholesale giant Cometa Networks has hired former AT&T executive Gary Weis as president and CEO, to take over from the interim holder of those positions, Cometa co-founder Larry Brilliant.

Weis, 55, who also will become a board member at Cometa, recently retired as senior vice president for global services at AT&T. He also has been a senior executive with IBM, and with separate IBM and AT&T joint ventures. Cometa itself is a joint venture between IBM, AT&T Business and Intel. Weis first joined AT&T in 1999, when the carrier acquired the IBM Global Network, for which Weis was general manager of network services.

Brilliant will stay with Cometa, becoming vice chairman, as well as chairman of the company’s technical advisory board. The company had been looking for Brillant’s successor in the chief operational jobs since Cometa launched late last fall.

The company is building out a broad network of Wi-Fi hot spots in the top 50 metropolitan markets in the U.S. It recently launched a network trial with McDonald’s restaurants in New York City, and also has established a roaming partnership with iPass designed to encourage corporate enterprise user to use its hot spots for remote access.