Whitey Bluestein, Visage Mobile

A few months ago, the St. Paul Venture Capital Group called telecom veteran Whitey Bluestein for some advice. Did he know anything about the mobile virtual network operator market?

”I actually invented the concept,” Bluestein responded.

Bluestein pioneered the MVNO model during the 1980s and 1990s while at MCI. The deals he crafted there, including an industry-first $10 billion airtime agreement with NextWave Telecom, were innovative and well received by analysts.

But the wireless industry failed to grasp the value. Other major providers saw MCI as the enemy, not a partner, and NextWave never even launched service, remaining embroiled in C block spectrum lawsuits with the FCC.

Seven years later, Bluestein is finally seeing the industry embrace MVNO partners to increase penetration and drive data adoption. He now heads corporate and business development for MVNO enabler Visage Mobile, a St. Paul-backed start-up that has designed what it calls an “MVNO in a box.”

With the lack of back-office support considered the biggest obstacle to widespread MVNO acceptance in the U.S., Visage's back-office platform allows MVNOs to offer customized offerings without investing in wireless expertise and infrastructure to handle functions such as billing, customer care and network switching.

Bluestein's foresight speaks for itself. In one example, he amassed several valuable paging and cellular properties for MCI, which the carrier sold to cellular mogul Craig McCaw for $116 million in 1986. When McCaw turned around and sold his business for $12 billion in 1994, the properties Bluestein had collected accounted for $4 billion of that total.

“We clearly were ahead of our time,” Bluestein said. “I created a lot of value, but my company didn't see the benefit.”

Now his timing may be just right.