MuniWireless

Effective today, EarthLink has a new president and CEO. He’s now responsible for setting EarthLink’s strategic direction. And he’s buying 100,000 shares of EarthLink stock to prove his commitment to the company. So who is this new leader and what are his views on public broadband? Effective today, EarthLink has a new president and CEO. He’s now responsible for setting EarthLink’s strategic direction. And he’s buying 100,000 shares of EarthLink stock to prove his commitment to the company. So who is this new leader and what are his views on public broadband?

First, here are the easy answers. Rolla P. Huff, EarthLink’s new leader, most recently was chairman and CEO of Mpower Communications, a facilities-based provider of voice and data services. Earlier, he held a variety of roles at Frontier Corp., NCR, AT&T and AT&T Wireless.

EarthLink began the search for a new leader after former CEO Gary Betty died of cancer in January.

Huff joins EarthLink during a critical inflection point for both the company and the public broadband industry as a whole ‚Äö?Ñ?¨ where successful deployments (such as Corpus Christi, Texas) are often overshadowed by delayed or flawed initiatives.

In April, EarthLink said it was closely evaluating the state of its current public broadband projects. A follow-up story by AP in May indicated that EarthLink would bid on fewer public broadband projects in the months ahead.

During our MuniWireless 2007 New England conference in June, EarthLink officials indicated that the company remained committed to the public broadband market ‚Äö?Ñ?¨ and that hiccups with early deployments were a natural challenge in any emerging technology sector.

What are Huff’s views on public broadband? That remains to be seen. EarthLink’s press release, announcing Huff to the president and CEO post, didn’t mention the term “public broadband.” But it did mention voice, data and wireless services.

Also of note, in EarthLink’s most recent 10Q filing with the SEC (dated May 7), the company indicated that it would “continue to expand our presence in growth markets, such as VoIP services, municipal wireless broadband services and business services,” among other initiatives.

We’ve reached out to EarthLink with a request to interview Huff as soon as he settles into the CEO slot, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted as his strategy for EarthLink begins to unfold.