Wireless-to-wireline migration: PrimeCo CEO Ben Scott heads to fiber network reseller

Ben Scott, one of the cellular veterans who helped shape the evolution of the wireless industry, has left wireless behind to lead a fiber network operator.

Scott, who saw PrimeCo Personal Communications through its formation and service launch as the company's president and chief executive officer, has been named president and CEO of IXC Communications. IXC sells capacity on its nationwide fiber network to local and long-distance carriers, cable TV operators, utility companies and Internet service providers.

Before heading up PrimeCo, Scott was president and CEO of Bell Atlantic International Wireless and held several posts at AT&T during his 20-year tenure there. He was one of the globally savvy executives recruited by start-up personal communication services companies to help direct the U.S. wireless industry's progression into a new generation of technology and competition.

Scott called the opportunity to head IXC, a publicly traded company, "too exciting to ignore" and likened it to his past professional challenges.

"I'm used to trying to manage high-growth companies with exciting-but also fairly hectic-agendas," Scott said. IXC hopes to complete its coast-to-coast fiber network by the end of the year, he said.

PrimeCo has promoted chief operating officer Lowell McAdam to the position of president and CEO. Richard Conrad, who is currently president of Bell Atlantic Mobile's New York Metro region, will replace McAdam as executive vice president and COO of PrimeCo.

McAdam expects a smooth transition and views Scott's departure as simply a casualty of competition.

"Ben and I have worked together to establish the strategies and goals of the business, so it's a clean and seamless handoff," he said. "When you have a business like PrimeCo with such seasoned executives at the lead, this kind of thing happens."

Scott's exit, however, marks PrimeCo's third substantial executive loss since its formation. The company's original CEO, George Schmitt, departed early on to run Omnipoint Communications, and chief engineer Keith Kaczmarek left earlier this year to join former AT&T President Alex Mandl at Teligent.

BellSouth is positioning its request to offer long-distance service in South Carolina as a chance for a reconfigured Federal Communications Commission to set new rules for competition.

The FCC, soon to have four of five new members, should use its authority under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to let BellSouth provide in-region long-distance service even though no competition exists for residential customers, said BellSouth President and Chief Executive Officer Duane Ackerman.

The Bell company claims that AT&T, MCI and Sprint have disavowed any intention to offer facilities-based service in the state because it is too rural to make a profit on such an investment. That could change, BellSouth believes.

"Once BellSouth is in long-distance, the long-distance companies will fall all over themselves getting into local," said David Markey, BellSouth's vice president of governmental affairs.

AT&T and MCI scoffed at the argument. The South Carolina Public Service Commission ruled unanimously that BellSouth met the requirements to show that local competition exists, but MCI alleged that BellSouth failed to meet the 14-point checklist. Furthermore, the state's consumer advocate opposes the PSC's decision, and a mere three-hundredths of 1% of MCI's traffic volume in South Carolina terminated with a new local market entrant in July, the carrier said.

AT&T also scoffed at the filing, claiming that BellSouth's intent "appears to be either to tie up the FCC or to use this application as a tool to get yet another aspect of the Telecom Act into a court proceeding."

The FCC has rejected long-distance petitions from Ameritech in Michigan and SBC Communications in Oklahoma, and some congressional critics wonder whether the FCC has set the bar for admission impossibly high.