...And by the way Allen, whatever the route you took to get back, I am just glad you are. As I said before, you were missed. You were, are, and always will be one of the good guys.
One day many of us should hit the porch with some scotch, a good laptop and good wireless connection :) and write a book. Patrick Leary AVP, Market Development Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit Alvarion at WiMAX World Chicago, September 25-27 Booth #409 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 8:21 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: RE: [WISPA] The MOBL Sage (Warning: Long Post) Quite a story Allen. I am aware of some minor parts of the MobilePRO saga. Bruce Sanquinetti was the former president of the U.S. subsidiary of BreezeCOM. He left BreezeCOM the same week I joined in August of 1999. He was a pretty mercurial guy from what I gathered by those that had worked with him. I am glad he left (or was asked to leave, I don't know which), because the corporate culture I have always worked under and tried to foster is a much different type and Lord knows I don't do well with autocrats -- I am, er, a bit too opinionated. I am now into my 9th year. Anyway, after BreezeCOM Bruce went on looking for the Next Big Thing, first trying to lead the old Wave Wireless out of Sarasota, FL. That did not go so well and he went on to start-up a new chip company. That went south and the next I heard was that he had joined MobilePRO. I think he did that for only about a year, then left that too. I have no idea what he is up to now. Your tale is certainly a cautionary one. My advice to WISPs is that if you are trying to exit via a sale of the company you built with your blood, sweat, tears and personal dollars ONLY sell for cash. Fortunately Allen you did get 1/2 in cash and you were smart enough to sell your shares as soon as you could. Patrick -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Allen Marsalis Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 8:24 PM To: wireless@wispa.org Subject: [WISPA] The MOBL Sage (Warning: Long Post) >Hello Allen, > >Good to see you back and doing well. Curious to hear your take on the >MobilePro saga. On or off list is good with me. The Friends Quite a few people have asked me (A) what have I been doing lately? And (B) please tell me the MobilePro saga. It means a lot to me that some of you have asked about me. It has hit me that although only have a handful of friends here in town, I did have 100+ friends in this industry! Thank you all for your kind thoughts and I do apologize for dropping off the planet like I did. That was my loss more than anyone else's. You are some of the finest people I have ever met in my life, besides my old ShreveNet staff. You know how I felt about my crew. Heck, you all helped me train them! ;) The Saga I will start with the MobilePro Saga and get it out of the way and move on to more positive things like the goodthings I have been up to in the past year or two. I tell you "The Saga" not as an excuse for my hiatus from the wireless industry, and excuse for my strange behavior, but well.......(get it? "Well", that's a deep subject, LOL) well...........because some of you asked me too (cough cough Brad Belton cough cough). Here goes...... It is somewhat of an interesting story I guess, for inside industry people like us, or else this might be extremely Off Topic for this list. As a WISP, this is not as easy story for me to tell. Not a happy story for me. I would like to tell the story and forget as much as possible and move on. Perhaps there is something that you can learn from this (yeah like Allen is not so smart after all? - (Maybe and maybe not, you decide) The Disclaimer It has been over 3 years since the sale of my (W)ISP to MobilePro. I am no longer under any agreement or obligation. I am now entitled to express my opinion right or wrong. This is my opinion and only my opinion. The Beginning Roll the clock back to 2004. Life is pretty good. Speaking at WISPCON. Drinking Romulan Ale with some of the finest people on the planet. (now argue that point) Why on earth would I want to sell my company? The WISP of my dreams? Whatsup wit dat? There were a whole host of reasons for selling out and many of which were personal some were reasonable, and some might have been downright psychotic. Here are some of the reasons I had for selling, just in case any of you ever consider selling yourself. That might be one of the most difficult decisions you ever make. Choose wisely! (A) I was not a "pureplay". We offered wireless, DSL, dialup, T1, hosting, web design, hotspots, you name it, I tried it all. My problems began as I began to take a beating on dialup amid new competition with cablemodem and several DSL carriers. I was bleeding revenues about 1% of month despite growth in broadband areas (DSL, wireless and T1) But I was all over the Northern state. Not much DSL and T1 out there in the boonies. And wireless was relatively a new trick for everyone back in those days. I was debt free until 1999 when I acquired the second largest ISP in the area (I was the largest). With this new debt, I borrowed even more to host all these new customers. (The old ISP was using crap) I got a good interest rate with the bank and with my father, both who backed me. LOL, then we REALLY started growing fast! (mainly dialup) So much of this debt was the result of left over baggage from the dial days plus the acquisition days and subsequent growth days. I began looking into my crystal ball and began to worry seeing an ever changing future in broadband. (especially wireless) Would I ever get this debt paid off in time before I must prepare for the next round of change? Then bang, my father came down with melanoma cancer in his lungs. This was right after Matt Larsen's Dad died. My Dad already had prostate cancer and basil cell carcinoma. (3 types total) at this time (04) My doctor told me he probably wouldn't see his next birthday. He was 84 at the time. I wanted to pay off my Dad before he passed away. That was a major factor. It was important to me that he be proud of his remaining only son. The First Lesson All Doctors aren't always right. My father found some new doctors with new ideas and had 3 very targeted lung surgeries (1 per year) and is doing remarkably well now for an 87 year old man. I am very proud of him. He is one "tough old bird" and just like the energizer bunny, he keeps going and going and going. He still drives to his office every day for a few hours every day. I'm on the 5th floor and he is on the 11th floor, still at 333 Texas all these many years. (He longer than I) Also a part of this lesson is to use various domain names for unique services. That way you can sell part and not all of a property. (as needed) More Reasons Around that time I suddenly had a "bad back". I didn't know what was wrong with my back. Looking back, I am convinced it was hauling all those cinder blocks and sakcrete bags up ladders on my shoulders along with my crew. While at the doctors, they said I had a bad test (you don't want TMI) and further testing showed a kidney stone. Long story short is -- I may have had one and passed it, but outpatient surgery yielded no stone. Stone free, my back was still bad and got me really down. To this day I don't think I ever even had a kidney stone. Anyway, I increased my evening dose of "Romulan Ale" which does help by the way :) The Second Lesson Take care out there on the jobsite. Both you and your crew. Ever see one of those "kidney belts" strapped around employees at Home Depot? No job is worth life or injury. I bought a new tempurpedic mattress and my back is MUCH better nowadays. Maybe 90% perfect now. Watch those "ballast" mount jobs. They are killer. Continue the Saga and Get on With It PLEASE! So I succumbed under all the pressure of all this, plus the normal pressures of raising a family yada yada, and I signed on with a new dot com broker. He hooked me up with MobilePro and the negotiations began with it's new CEO and Chairman of the Board (Not a good combination) A CEO should never be the Chairman of the Board at the same time, which is not illegal but at the same time , it is somewhat shady in my amateur stockbroker option. For example, if a disgruntled shareholder wants to go past the CEO and email the Board directly, well guess what? The CEO is the Chairman of the Board! So he decides if the letter should be passed on to the Board or not. But I digress.... I was looking for a new investor to replace my Dad. I asked the buyer questions such as this. "Are you going to keep my staff, or lay them all off?" (You know how I felt about my staff) The answers I got were like this. "Of course we want your staff. Why else would be buy the company if we didn't want the people who built it". Next question, "Are you going to put us into retention mode, or invest in wireless?" Answer; "Invest in wireless. We are a wireless company. We have $100MM and you will be The Wireless Director for the entire nation". Good Answers! SOLD! I received half cash and half MOBL shares after all my debts were paid. By law I had to hold those shares for 12 months (Rule 144 of the Tax Act of 1933) The MobilePro Story MobilePro purchases about 10 or 11 ISP's total. I was #4. Then they purchased the nation's largest independent phone booth company (Davel), and after that, a couple of CLEC's (AFN and CloseCall). Why phone booths I pondered? Answer; to build WIFI hotspots out of them. Well that turned out to be a total joke, and I never could convince anyone at MOBL to build out even 10 or 12 (out of 40,000 booths) as a test project. I had significant Subscriber Gateway experience at that point building hotspots using Routerboards if you recall. That was all part of the "pump and dump" IMHO. Meanwhile, the ISP's were going through a "train wreck integration" plan masterminded by the clueless head of the ISP division. Our customers started to complain big time. Now my job shifted to "damage control" as the local flavor of these ISP's was dismantled and centralized out of state. Email service was deteriorating (even mail spools being lost) and it became clear the company was not going to invest a penny in any of the ISP's but rather bleed them to pay new expenses (salaries at top levels for example). There was much piercing of the "corporate veil". I experienced some low points. For instance, I employed a quadriplegic who was one of my best call center (tech support) employees. He could move one arm enough to operate a mouse. He was as high school football star injured during a game. He was a favorite with our customer base and was in the newspaper and got more positive feedback than just about all other employees combined. I received the order to terminate him as they were running adds in Arizona for their new centralized call center at, get this, more money than I paid this person with over 7 years experience! Go figure.... The Ditch One day I spoke with my lawyer whose firm was a long time customer of mine in the same building (333 Texas St), and he asked me why MP was running things off into a ditch! I said, Heck, I dunno, why don't you call their lawyer and ask them? As an investor I was concerned with what I was seeing on a daily basis, and nobody seemed to even care. Go for it. So my attorney called MP's on-staff attorney, and asked him flat out if they realized that "management was running the ISP's off into a ditch". LOL, they never even responded to us. I had almost a million shares mind you... At the same time, the CEO is responding to emails from tiny shareholders with many fewer share but who were active on "the boards" such as Ragingbull.com. Pumpers they are called. It was a classic "pump and dump" scheme IMHO. I was halfway into my 2 year contract where I could legally sell my shares. I was on the edge of my seat counting the days. I actually had to threaten MOBL with eviction if they didn't get me personally off their lease after almost 1 whole year of procrastination. No joke. It was a chaotic mess. After several threats, I got my stock certificates unregistered, and was threatened with a lawsuit if I didn't quit immediately. So I quit.... The Good News. I sold my MOBL shares. Dumped them ASAP. We all did. All my employee/partners and I dumped MOBL like a hot potato while the gettin' was good. I sold between $0.34 and $0.30. To put things in perspective, a couple of years later, today, right now, MOBL is at $0.0008. Did I do the right thing? I did the right thing obviously. I was right and all of MOBL management was wrong. I outsmarted a Wall Street, a New England, Georgetown lawyer, Merrill Lynch guru, not by intelligence, but by pure dumb luck. A good ole boy from Louisiana. Heheheheheheh, I sold on a strong gut feeling because I knew things were not right in my heart. It was obvious and very frustrating. So I sold out.....Again only 12 months later after selling my WISP.. This was very hard for me. You all know me. The Bad News I am out of a job and a career and on the street. I haven't had a paycheck in the longest time. I used my profits to live off of and start a new business, and a new chapter in my life. One that is behind a desk, much like I did in the 80's. One that is "back friendly" with lots of hope and promise (like the good ole days) like a desk job. Ah, but there is more to the Saga Why wasn't I still the "wireless director" when I was forced to quit? Because of a man named Bruce Sanguinetti, a former founder of Breezecom. Perhaps Patrick knows him. Bruce came on board and quickly knifed me and took over my position. Fixed wireless?? Are you kidding? We are NOT going to do any truck rolls! No CPE! "What?", I said? I did not realize back in '04 that the "holy grail" had be found! LOL So Bruce headed the Tempe muni wifi project and MobilePro bought Kite Networks, ironically a "fixed wireless" Sprint subcontractor. Muni WIFI?? That is the holy grail? The Old Sprint MMDS Project Steve Stroh can correct me if I'm wrong. His memory is much better than mine. But recall the old Sprint MMDS network in Phoenix and a few other markets? They had about 15k or 20k users at one time as I recall before they put a freeze on signups back years ago. 20k isn't much by my dial-up standards, but this was the largest fixed wireless network in the country IIRC. Well Sprint found someone named Jerry Sullivan at Kite Networks (Old Tritel mogul?) to contract out the maintenance of these licensed spectrum fixed wireless customers owned by Sprint. MOBL buy's Kite from Jerry for something like $20MM (I forget). (wink wink) Last month, MOBL just sold Kite to someone called Gobility for barely $2MM only the deal has fallen through cause they can't get funding or something. Whatever.. So this represents yet another major stockholder loss. As a side note, Robert Hoskins at Broadband Wireless Exchange was so duped. Even at this moment he lists MobilePro as the largest WISP in the USA by Robert. LMAO......I don't believe it, do you? <http://www.bbwexchange.com/wireless_isp/>http://www.bbwexchange.com/wir eless_isp/ MOBL owns very few true wireless customers. Sprint owns all those MMDS customers. Robert is smarter than that so I have to wonder. Sprint is technically the largest WISP in the nation measure by customers OWNED rather than customers "served" as a subcontractor. But Sprint never claimed that honor (or got to Robert for the publicity) Sorry Robert, I'm not dissing you. Just disappointed for the lack of due diligence or whatever. Quite a big zit on your website if you ask me. Butr hey, what do I know..... The Financing MOBL primarily used Cornell Capital Partners for their funding. Cornell has a history with funding companies that is less than favorable for investors. Google "Cornell Capital" it if you are interested. In fact, Google Cornell plus Death Spiral... LMAO. My Opinion It is my opinion that MOBL represented a "Toxic Financing" or otherwise "Death Spiral" financing scheme perpetrated by top management. Cornell is under investigation by the SEC. I don't know about MOBL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_spiral_financing Google more if you care to. I don't... I've witnessed enough of this wreck. The Result MOBL is a subpenny stock that has fallen 95% plus, yet the CEO is continued to be rewarded and paid $240k per year plus incentives. He got a bonus for every company bought or sold. His name is Jay O. Wright. Please remember this name incase he ever wants to buy you out. The Conclusion That's about all I know to say. There is much more detail to the story. Did you know that the son of Bing Crosby, Nathaniel Crosby was a MOBL pumper called Wiseinvestments? It is a sordid tale and I should write a book, but I have kids to feed now. I believe Wiseinvestments was friends with Jack Beech who you know Brad... Bing would roll over in his grave to see how "NatInvestments" turned out. LOL, I wonder if they have access to Google up in heaven. In any event, this is the "Cliff Notes" of the Saga which is more like a Soap Opera if you ask me. I hope this brief overview of the story helps someone somehow to avoid a mistake or two (or three) that I have made in my career. My relief is knowing that 10 other ISP's also followed the same path. Some good Wireless folks like Paul Sadler. I am in good company and the fact remains that I always was................... You might think you are smart like I did, but with the flick of a switch, you find yourself in a whole new wall street corporate realm that is unlike our world. I got a taste of that world, and now I believe in "independents" more than ever. From the bottom of my heart I wish you all Good Luck and to kick some serious butt and teach those corporate [EMAIL PROTECTED]@ards the meaning of the word "WISP". All Giants fail because of their greed and their arrogance and their incumbencies. They can't pay off lawyers forever. Everyone loves the underdog. You have a job to do. So stop reading this post Get to work and I wish I could be there with you. I chose a new path and hopefully it wasn't all in vain. That will be part 2 if this post doesn't get bounced for being too long. Allen am at bandwise dot com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- ** Join us at the WISPA Reception at 6:30 PM on October the 16th 2007 at ISPCON ** ** ISPCON Fall 2007 - October 16-18 - San Jose, CA www.ispcon.com ** ** THE INTERNET INDUSTRY EVENT ** ** FREE Exhibits and Events Pass available until August 31 ** ** Use Customer Code WSEMF7 when you register online at http://www.ispcon.com/register.php ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- WISPA Wants You! 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Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ ************************************************************************ ************ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses(190). ************************************************************************ ************ ************************************************************************ ************ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses(42). ************************************************************************ ************ ************************************************************************************ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses(84). ************************************************************************************ ************************************************************************************ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. ************************************************************************************ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** Join us at the WISPA Reception at 6:30 PM on October the 16th 2007 at ISPCON ** ** ISPCON Fall 2007 - October 16-18 - San Jose, CA www.ispcon.com ** ** THE INTERNET INDUSTRY EVENT ** ** FREE Exhibits and Events Pass available until August 31 ** ** Use Customer Code WSEMF7 when you register online at http://www.ispcon.com/register.php ** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
