Tom Cullen, president and COO, Tensorcomm. Fought on both sides of the telco-cable broadband war, first with MediaOne and later as EVP of cable TV force Charter Communications. Witnessed critical moments in the maturity of broadband, such as cable modems. More recently put himself in position to witness similar moments in the maturity of mobile broadband.

People say “Why the hell did you go from a large, well-known cable company to a small, unknown wireless start-up?” But I also had been president of MediaOne Ventures, so it's not like I hadn't been exposed to start-ups.

It's an environment that some people can get into and excel in, and it can also be a lot of fun. Our Interference Cancellation Technology extends capacity and coverage, and one of its key selling points is that it resides in CDMA handsets, so there is no expensive network upgrade. It's something our founder, John Thomas, has been working on for 12 years. He was asked by the military after the first Gulf War to help do something to improve interference in GPS systems. He did that, and afterward, he retained the commercial rights to the technology and got it to the point where it could be extended to any coded wireless schema.

Our technology can be applicable on a worldwide scale. There are challenges to working with chipset developers, handset manufacturers and carriers. The biggest is being in three different cities at once. But I've dealt with a lot of large partners in my career, and companies from all across the industry. I helped launch voice service at Charter, and before I left we were talking about offering a wireless service.

You look at where the wireless industry is right now, and there are some interesting parallels to broadband in the wireline industry. It reminds me of when cable modem technology started. The wireless industry still has that kind of explosive growth in front of it. In the early days of broadband, a lot of people thought, ‘How could I ever want more bandwidth? What would I do with it?’ Now, there are many operators ready to offer 6 Mb/s service, and it's not enough. We have things like Napster to thank for that.

In wireless, were are really just beginning to scratch that broadband surface.