Amp’d’s founder, CEO no longer with company

We’ve opined before that management may have been the problem with Amp’d mobile. They had a quality vision, but everything came tumbling down when they didn’t have structure or strategy in place to handle an onslaught of customers. And, when customer service is that bad, it speaks further volumes of the management over them.

So, in the interest of seeing Amp’d reemerge from their bout with Chapter 11, we’re glad to see that founder and CEO Peter Adderton has left the company. Sometimes, the guy who got the ball rolling just isn’t the guy to keep it moving. This appears to be one of those cases.

As we said, his vision was great, and it was delivering, “racking up industry-leading average revenue per subscriber amounts of more than $100 a month, of which $30 a month came from data services.”

Here’s the thing, though. To whom does Amp’d appeal? Teenagers and 20-somethings. What demographic is least able to pay their bills? Wow, it’s teenagers and 20-somethings (we’re not counting tweens, as their parents almost always cover cell costs). Teenagers and 20-somethings also typically have commitment issues, so they might not understand the weight of the 18-month contract they signed. The result: 80,000 customers defaulting on bills.

But the vision is already moving ahead, so Adderton isn’t as indispensable as he once was. He’ll still serve on the board of the directors, but the executive position will change hands. There haven’t been any announcements of a replacement, but there are a few viable in-house candidates: Amp’s president, Bill Stone, formerly a Verizon exec, and Sue Swenson, who was COO of T-Mobile and president of Leap Wireless.

This is a good step in the proceedings. We’re already more confident that Amp’d will reemerge.

[Telephony’s Wireless Review]