The Globetrotter

Luis Pajares: A defense career took a telecom turn. Pushed fiber and microwave for NEC. Traveled the world for DSC (then Alcatel). Sold signaling innovation at Inet. Now spreading the mobile data word as vice president of worldwide sales and services for Airvana.

I was in the defense industry in 1983 at Texas Instruments negotiating contracts for radar systems for bombers. There was this new diet called fiber optics — it was fiber this and fiber that. The whole fiber revolution was something that really interested me.

I got my first telecom job with NEC when they were starting major fiber deployments. I sold to the North American ILECs. There were about 1800 independent telephone companies, and I personally went to 1200 of them. Or at least it feels that way.

My first exposure to wireless was at NEC. Cellular was just beginning to explode, and the cellular carriers began buying a ton of microwave radios. We helped the cellular providers decide whether to lease facilities or put in microwave backhaul.

I became very associated with wireless at DSC. The company didn't have a strong wireless strategy, so I took charge of it and built a team. When Alcatel acquired DSC, I became the country manager for all of Alcatel's business in Canada, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

I had spent 10 years at NEC and was going into my sixth year with DSC/Alcatel. I had seen the big company picture. I wanted a much faster pace. Inet was a smaller company that gave me a broader view. You don't know what you don't know until you try to do business in fifty different countries.

The things I learned about Airvana were so compelling that I left a very good, very comfortable place for it. First, it was the caliber of the people: I've never run across a group with such a balance of experience and knowledge and vision. Number two was the relationships: Everywhere I turned to check up on these guys, I kept hearing that this company was going somewhere. Lastly, the solution: People desire mobility for more than just voice. Mobility is a killer application.

Wireless has always been much more competitive, with market forces dictating the pace at which things evolve. Because of that, there is a larger propensity for cutting-edge technology.

I look at the opportunity we have with Airvana to literally change the way a country does things, to move social behavior in a certain way — that's pretty powerful. I have to be one of the luckiest people in the world.