Wireless Veteran Anne Schelle to Lead OMVC Efforts

Open Mobile Video Coalition Aims to Create New Technical Standard for Using DTV Spectrum to Broadcast to Cellular Phones, Other Portable Devices

By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/25/2008 3:46:00 PM

Wireless veteran Anne Schelle was named executive director of the Open Mobile Video Coalition, the consortium of 800 local stations that is trying to create a new technical standard for using digital-TV spectrum to broadcast to cellular phones and other portable devices.

Schelle is a former vice president for external relations at American Personal Communications/Sprint Spectrum, the country’s first digital wireless startup, and a former director of the PCS division of PCIA, a wireless trade association. She also served as manager of business development at LCC, a cellular engineering-consulting firm, and as a financial analyst for McCaw Cellular Communications, MCI/Airsignal, where she guided the company’s efforts to win a Pioneer’s Preference from the Federal Communications Commission and helped to launch the nation’s first digital cellular network in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore market.

Most recently, Schelle served as a partner at Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Actium Advisors, which provides strategic, transactional and operational expertise to telecommunications, media and finance companies. From 1999-2007, she was president of Tasman Technologies, a specialized consulting firm providing business and strategic services to telecommunications companies, and before that, she cofounded xDSL Networks, a high-speed broadband-Internet-access company.

She holds a bachelor’s of arts degree in biology from Emory University.

”The OMVC has made tremendous strides since its launch, and today, we mark another milestone in our organization’s forward momentum with the appointment of a stellar executive director whose experience, vision and leadership will help take us to the next level,” said Brandon Burgess, chairman of the OMVC and chairman and CEO of ION Media Networks, in a statement.

“Anne is an ideal choice as we seek to move forward in realizing the enormous potential and opportunity of mobile digital television,” added Lynn Beall, OMVC executive committee member and executive VP at Gannett Broadcasting.