By Frank Boulben, Executive Vice President, Strategy, Marketing and Sales
December 7, 2011
Lately, LightSquared has been quite busy signing up a variety of new partners, across a wide range of industries. While this certainly signals exciting momentum for LightSquared, if you take a closer look – and as Fierce Wireless recently pointed out – you’ll notice a very compelling story about “non-traditional” companies who are partnering with us to help them enter the U.S. wireless market. These companies epitomize the spirit of entrepreneurship – boasting innovation, enthusiasm and a determination to transform the wireless landscape.
Three examples are Smarter Car, Soundtracker and m-banco, each of which has its own unique reason for working with LightSquared.
SmarterCar plans to use LightSquared’s cellular network – and satellite – to allow consumers and automobile dealers to use in-vehicle devices to access and analyze critical vehicle information, ranging from maintenance updates to location-sharing. Customers of Soundtracker, a geosocial Internet radio company, can now use a mobile product that bundles music and connectivity, giving them access to more than 11 million songs, regardless of location. Meanwhile, the U.S. Latino community, which makes up the customer base of m-banco, can use mobile devices not only for voice communications, but to conduct banking services such as wire transfers and ATM transactions, effectively creating “mobile wallets.”
We’re also helping transform “traditional” device manufacturers so they can participate in the connectivity game; AirTouch and Cellular Product Distributors (CPD-USA) can now bundle their devices with connectivity from LightSquared, creating new recurring revenue streams that are the holy grail for businesses.
What attracted these emerging companies to LightSquared was not only a state-of-the-art 4G wireless network, complemented with ubiquitous satellite coverage, but a game-changing business model that offers connectivity at very competitive wholesale prices, allowing them to efficiently deliver affordable access to content and services. In an increasingly wireless world, LightSquared is delivering on its mission to foster innovation and create much-needed competition in the wireless marketplace.
Frank Boulben is the executive vice president for strategy, marketing and sales. In this role he oversees strategy, marketing, and partner development for the first-ever wholesale-only open broadband network that uses an integration of terrestrial and satellite technology. Prior to joining LightSquared, Frank was global director of commercial strategy for Vodafone Group, where he was responsible for the company’s wholesale roaming business as well as its pricing, customer investment policies, and strategic management. He joined Vodafone in 2007 as new business development director.
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