Things that make you go, "...HMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........
CONTACT:
Christian Gunning
Boingo Wireless™
310-586-4009
christian@boingo.com
Boingo Wireless announces founding and funding
Sky Dayton's New Company Secures $15 Million;
Announces Executive Team and Board Members
SANTA MONICA, Calif. -Dec. 20, 2001 - Sky Dayton today announced his latest venture, Boingo Wireless, an ultra-high-speed wireless Internet service provider. The company will soon provide wireless broadband Internet service through hundreds of public Wi-Fi "Hot Spots."
Founded in February 2001, Boingo Wireless secured $15 million in venture funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Sprint PCS and Evercore Ventures in its Series A round. Boingo™ has been built quietly for nearly a year, operating under the stealth name "Project Mammoth."
Executive Team
Boingo Wireless has assembled a team with extensive backgrounds in identifying and addressing customer needs, building and operating call centers, creating and integrating large-scale ISP systems, and selling Internet services. Key team members include:
Sky Dayton, founder, CEO, chairman - best known as chairman and founder of EarthLink; this is his first CEO role since founding EarthLink in 1994;
David Hagan, president - previous roles include CEO of FirstSource, president/COO of Ticketmaster Online CitySearch, and division president and executive vice president for Sprint Canada, where he was responsible for launching Sprint-branded long distance, local and ISP services in Canada;
Phill Gross, senior vice president, engineering - formerly vice president of network services at EarthLink; a veteran of the Internet who helped found the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF);
Jon Rietmulder, senior vice president, operations - previously vice president of network services at MindSpring.
Board of Directors
Boingo has an experienced board of directors, including: Austin Beutner, president of Evercore; John Sidgmore, vice chairman of WorldCom and former CEO of UUNET; Peter Barris, managing general partner, NEA; and Stewart Alsop, general partner, NEA. Dayton serves as chairman.
"Sky Dayton is a great entrepreneur, and Wi-Fi is the biggest opportunity in technology today," said Stewart Alsop, general partner, NEA. "In the past 24 years, we've learned that the combination of the two always leads to a great investment."
"Wi-Fi has the potential to turn the communications industry on its head," said John Sidgmore, vice chairman of WorldCom. "Boingo has tapped into the most exciting thing happening in telecom right now."
Advisory Board
To ensure Boingo is monitoring the evolution of technologies that affect the wireless ISP market, the company has also formed an advisory board: members currently include Mike O'Dell, former chief scientist at UUNET; and Dave Farber, professor of telecommunications at the University of Pennsylvania and the former CTO of the FCC.
About Sky Dayton
Boingo Wireless is the first CEO role for Dayton since founding EarthLink over 7 years ago. He remains chairman of EarthLink, which has grown to become the largest independent ISP in the US, with almost 5 million customers, over $1 billion in annual revenue and more than 6,000 employees.
"I've spent many years looking for another idea with EarthLink potential," said Dayton. "Last year I set up a Wi-Fi network in my house, and I realized I was looking at the next stage of the Internet. I knew had to make the leap and be CEO again. With Wi-Fi, the wireless Internet is now affordable and easy - to build and to use.
"I see a world where thousands of entrepreneurs and companies build millions of wireless broadband Hot Spots using Wi-Fi, blanketing cities with wireless broadband. These networks will be popping up everywhere, and it will be chaos. Boingo's mission is to organize that chaos, to make it easy to find and connect to the wireless Internet wherever you are."
About Boingo Wireless
Boingo Wireless, Inc. was founded in 2001 by Sky Dayton, founder and current chairman of EarthLink. Boingo received venture funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Sprint PCS and Evercore Ventures. Boingo's strategy is to provide the largest network of ultra-high speed wireless Internet access for business travelers through Wi-Fi "Hot Spots" worldwide. For more information, or to download a beta version of Boingo's free Wi-Fi software, visit www.boingo.com or call 800-U-Boingo.
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