Mobile Movers

It has been a busy summer for executives moving into new positions in the mobile industry. In addition to Disney announcing a new team of managers to lead its charge into mobile (see this month's cover story, page 24), several other companies made significant executive hirings over the last several weeks. Here's the skinny on just a few of them:

Kineto Wireless, one of the companies behind unlicensed mobile access technology for cellular/Wi-Fi convergence, hired seasoned telecom executive Rick Gilbert as president and CEO. Gilbert most recently was the chairman and CEO of Copper Mountain, a vendor of broadband access products to service providers. Gilbert also used to be the president of Kentrox, an access company acquired several years ago by ADC Telecommunications.

Kurt Hellstrom, the former president and CEO of Ericsson who is now a board member at Kineto, said in a statement that Gilbert's experience makes him a good choice to lead the company just as UMA is getting market acceptance from carriers and major vendors such as Nokia, Motorola and Alcatel. BT also uses UMA in its new Fusion fixed-mobile convergence service, and Kineto recently signed deals with Samsung and LG Electronics to make handsets based on UMA technology.

Motorola announced recently that Terry Vega joined Motorola's mobile devices business to lead the global CDMA efforts. She will be based at Motorola's South Plainfield, N.J., facility and report directly to Ron Garriques, executive vice president and president of Motorola's Mobile Devices Business.

Vega has been involved with wireless for several years, having helped launch the first CDMA networks in the mid-1990s for Sprint, SKT, Verizon Wireless and other carriers while she was with Lucent Technologies. Vega most recently served as group president of wireless, cable and emerging markets at Telcordia Technologies, a supplier of software solutions for network management and operations. There, she created a $100 million operation in wireless service creation and assurance during a two-and-a-half year tenure.

At Lucent, Vega had been chief operating officer of Lucent's wireless infrastructure business, managing the AMPS, CDMA and TDMA segments. She also worked in the company's network solutions and optical networking groups, and was president of wireless products for Philips Consumer Communications, a joint venture between Lucent and Philips.

Broadband wireless access equipment vendor Alvarion announced plans this summer for Tzvika Friedman, president and chief operating officer of the company for the past four years, to succeed Zvi Slonimsky as CEO in October 2005. Slonimsky will continue to serve as a director of the company.

Slonimsky has led Alvarion through multiple mergers and acquisitions, as well as partnerships with companies such as Intel, to become a leading international vendor in broadband wireless access and one of the key members of the WiMAX Forum.