Former Sprint Execs Join Rivada

Rivada Mercury today announced the appointments of four former Sprint executives to its senior leadership team: Pierre Elisseeff, Peter Campbell, Bill Esrey, and Todd Rowley.

Rivada has developed an Open Access Wireless Marketplace that allows bandwidth to be bought, sold, and traded at the wholesale level. The company’s Dynamic Spectrum Arbitrage (DSA) technology allows buyers to acquire wireless bandwidth for a specific period of time in a specific location.

Having built a successful wholesale business at Sprint, Rivada Networks’ new hires will leverage the company’s technological advances to transform the mobile broadband industry.

Pierre Elisseeff is Rivada Mercury’s chief financial officer. He was previously vice president and wholesale business unit CFO at Sprint, where he successively oversaw the Enterprise/Wholesale and Postpaid Consumer
businesses.

Peter Campbell will join Rivada Mercury as chief information officer. He has more than 30 years of experience in the telecommunications sector, and joins Rivada after holding the same post at Sprint, where he recently led the deployment of OSS and BSS systems in support of Sprint’s multi-billion-dollar National US LTE Network Upgrade covering tens of thousands of cell sites.

Bill Esrey joins Rivada Mercury as senior vice president of wholesale and business development. Before joining Rivada, Bill was with Sprint where he was responsible for the growth and retention of Sprint's largest business customers selling cloud, wireline, wireless, M2M and various mobility applications. He served in Sprint’s Global Wholesale organization as vice president of operations, product, marketing and global sales. Bill brings over 27 years of experience in the telecom industry working for Sprint, Ameritech, and CentelCorporations.

Todd Rowley joins Rivada Mercury as senior vice president of business development. He most recently spent the past 16 years serving as vice president of business development at Sprint. There he was responsible for leading certain strategic partnering and commercial deals and working with the business units to develop strategic direction and new business models and opportunities. He has also led Sprint’s strategic efforts to develop and execute a rural LTE coverage strategy through partnerships with rural and regional carriers across the country.

The appointments follow the recent announcement that former Sprint CFO Joe Euteneuer joined Rivada Mercury as CEO. Rivada Mercury is the company formed by Rivada Networks, Fujitsu, the Harris Corporation, Nokia and Black & Veatch to offer to build out FirstNet’s nationwide public-safety broadband network. Euteneuer also serves as co-CEO of Rivada Networks.

“Rivada is building the best wholesale and network operations team in the industry as we move to disrupt the way wireless works. Pierre, Peter, Bill and Todd are second to none at what they do. I look forward to working them as Rivada drives the commoditization of mobile bandwidth,” stated Rivada Networks Co-CEO and Executive Chairman Declan Ganley.