Texas carrier Grande Communications named Roy Chestnutt its new chief executive officer today, effective Feb. 13.

Chestnutt is a former Texas resident, having once served in Austin as Nextel Communications’ Southwestern regional vice president. When Nextel merged with Sprint, Chestnutt became the merged company’s senior vice president of national field sales and general business. In the 1990s, Chestnutt also served the San Antonio/Austin market as vice president and general manager of Texas-based PCS provider PrimeCo Personal Communications, which Sprint acquired in 1998.

He holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of San Francisco.

Chestnutt replaces Scott Ferguson, who was named interim CEO in July 2005, upon the departure of previous CEO and co-founder Bill Morrow, who remains on the board of directors.

In November, Grande appointed Reid Fitzgerald its director of network sales and H. Lee Linton its director of business solutions.

The company, which provides a mix of cable, telephony and high-speed Internet service, reported a net loss of about $36.8 million in the third quarter of 2005, an 8% improvement from a year earlier. Though its customer count increased 2.5% sequentially that quarter to 134, 919, its average revenue per user declined less than 1% to $85.18.