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Allen Salmasi Biography
Allen Salmasi is the Chairman and CEO at Veea Inc. Prior to co-founding Veea in 2014, Mr. Salmasi was the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of NextWave Telecom Inc. and, its spin-off, NextWave Wireless Inc. (“NextWave”), a San Diego-based company that he founded in 1996. In partnership with MCI Communications Corporation, NextWave developed and substantially implemented the first Mobile Virtual Network Operator (“MVNO”) service in the US. NextWave also acquired substantial spectrum assets in the US and other countries between 1996 and 2007. NextWave Telecom was acquired by Verizon in 2005 and, its spin-off, NextWave Wireless was acquired by AT&T in 2013. NextWave also pioneered several products and technologies that were acquired at various times such as packet-switched wireless broadband network equipment and devices for TD-CDMA, LTE and devices based on various implementations of OFDMA waveform as well as mobile media and streaming software platform that was adopted by Google for Android devices.
Prior to NextWave, Mr. Salmasi served as the President of Wireless Division, Chief Strategy Officer and a member of the Board of Directors at Qualcomm Incorporated from 1988 to 1995, where he initiated and led the business development activities for the cellular products, including chipset and handset developments and production, for Code Division Multiple Access (“CDMA”) technology. Prior to Qualcomm, Mr. Salmasi was the Chief Executive Officer and President of Omninet Corporation from 1983 to 1988, which developed and launched OmniTRACS product and services in 1985. As the first large scale commercial application of CDMA, OmniTRACS became the world’s first and largest commercial terrestrial mobile satellite communications service for two-way messaging and position reporting service. Omninet merged with Qualcomm in 1988. Mr. Salmasi began his career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He holds two Bachelor of Science degrees with honors in Electrical Engineering and Business Management and Economics from Purdue University and two Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from Purdue University and the University of Southern California, respectively. While working at Omninet, he completed his doctoral coursework at University of Southern California towards a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering with his dissertation (defense pending) on “Design trade-offs for implementation of low-earth orbit communication systems.”