Sanjiv Ahuja, ex CEO of Orange PLC (his feat include growing orange from 40m customer base to 100m customer base in the last 4 years of his association. In the same time frame he also extended it to 23 countries up from 17 countries. Of which 14 countries were from Africa). No wonder he pursued his competency, experience and passion in similar direction. He is now incubating 2 major 3G/4G communication network companies globally.
Augere is wireless broadband provider in India, Pakistan, Rwanda and Bangladesh. Obviously with further plans to roll it out to third world coutries. He has purchased licenses at fraction of the metro level license costs in rural areas.
Lightsqaured is a extra terrestrial satellite network for providing broad band into rural areas.. particularly in south america, easter europe and south asia. SkyTerra Communications is acquired by Harbinger Capital Partners in 2010. Sanjiv Ahuja further is invited to become CEO and chairman of this initiative. The organisation is at various stages of getting approvals from FCC and European Communication Commission. This is not an entirely new concept. The differentiator is timing and also the fact that this is coming along with similar initiatives from the same group so there is always collaboration.
The universal need for broadband is one thing, but the business acumen to build founding markets in rural lands of Africa and Asia is another thing. they are cheap at the moment for picking, growth in next decade needs to come from this space etc. We will need to see how this story develops in next 2-3 years time frame.
Potentially Sanjiv has the reach and experience of running a multi national telco specifically in the same countries he is trying to set up rich broadband networks. He has the financial backing of the VCs. And above all timing. This should win :-)
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