Hardened Salesman Turned Hard-Charging CEO | Rob Shanahan President & CEO, Lightower Fiber Networks
Photo/Ron Bouley
Always up for a challenge, Rob Shanahan has Lightower Fiber Networks on a path to rapid growth.
When Rob Shanahan first entered the telecommunications business, there was one major player: AT&T.
It was 1984, and the phone business was just starting to break apart. Shanahan got a job after graduating from Marist College working for a startup long distance company, which back then, was a pretty foreign concept.
"I always like a good challenge and that was certainly challenging... People didn't believe that there was an alternative to the phone company," he recalls. "...A lot of doors slammed in my face." But Shanahan stuck with it and helped grow the company as director of sales.
That unflappable drive to succeed that strengthens the resolve of all good salesmen has helped Shanahan even as his direct sales responsibility has been traded in for management duties.
After rising through the ranks of that up-start telecom, Shanahan went on to key positions at MCI and later Brooks Fiber, which was eventually acquired by WorldCom in 1998. At that point, Shanahan recalls, he decided he wanted to start his own telecom company.
That company was called Conversent Communications and Shanahan grew it "from nothing" to a 900-employee organization with a presence in 14 states. Conversent was eventually sold in a roll up of several telecom firms and the final entity was branded as One Communications.
Doubling Up
But that success didn't satisfy Shanahan. He's now the head of Lightower Fiber Networks, a Boxborough-based company that's aggressively expanding its fiber optic network throughout the Northeast.
Lightower Fiber Networks was originally part of Lightower Wireless. It was owned, up until 2007, by National Grid, when it was sold to M/C Venture Partners and Wachovia Capital Partners. After the sale, Lightower was split into two separate companies: Lightower Fiber, which is headquartered in Boxborough, and Lightower Wireless, which was acquired by SBA Communications.
The fiber business has two main customer groups: traditional telecommunications firms like Verizon that want access to its infrastructure, and large businesses like colleges, hospitals or financial firms, that want its network to support data transport and housing.
Now that the firm is standing on its own, Lightower Fiber is on a path for growth. It had 21 percent revenue growth in 2009, according to Shanahan.
"We've run out of space in Boxborough," he says. "We have people doubled up in cubicles."
The demand for high-speed data transfer is fueling Lightower's aggressive plans.
"It's a tremendous opportunity," Shanahan says.
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