Here's to Dan Hesse Lighting a Fire Under Sprint

I've known Dan Hesse, who was just named as Sprint's new CEO, for quite a long time, first meeting him back when he was CEO of AT&T Wireless -- back when AT&T wasn't the AT&T that is AT&T now, and when, in fact, AT&T Wireless actually led the industry by offering some of the first Nokia phones for the U.S. and charging users a single base price for calls made anywhere. At the time, the standard practice was to gouge cell phone users on roaming charges.

(Oh, and Hesse is still on Nokia's board. How's that going to play with Sprint's other cell phone suppliers?)

And then Dan went to this curious start-up called Terabeam. It originally planned to use some new technology that diffused laser beams to create a wireless broadband network that could cover a city. At one time, Hesse thought Terabeam might become something like a Wi-Max, creating a broadband Internet competitor. Or at least that's what I remember. Didn't quite turn out that way, but Terabeam is still around.

Then Dan went to Sprint to run its local phone operations, which were spun out into a new company, Embarq, so Sprint could be a pure wireless company. So now Dan has come full circle back to running a big nationwide wireless provider -- except this time he's starting out as the underdog to Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless (um, which is not at all the AT&T Wireless Hesse used to run).

Here's to hoping that position means Hesse will take some chances to once again reinvent the wireless industry, the way he did at AT&T Wireless. He made changes then that made consumers happy. Amazingly, that's often a very effective way to do business.

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