ValleyNet hires David Keller as general manager

Valley Network partnership (ValleyNet) today announced the appointment of David Keller as general manager to succeed Charles Richardson.

Keller is a telecommunications industry veteran with more than 25 years in leadership positions with Sprint, AEP Communications, NTELOS, Lumos Networks, and CenturyLink.  With a history of developing strategic relationships to provide access to underserved markets, Keller has worked in sales, marketing, and operations departments supporting large carrier customers in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions..

”I am pleased to announce the hire of Dave Keller as the new head of ValleyNet,” said Mike Jewell, current ValleyNet board chairman and director at CenturyLink. “Dave understands the changing industry, and I look forward to his leadership and vision to move the partnership forward. Dave spent the last several years working closely with the partners and I am confident that his working knowledge coupled with technical knowledge and local market expertise will lead to growth.”

“Charles Richardson, an industry veteran with more than 43 years experience in telecommunications, has decided to retire.  Charles led the transformation of ValleyNet from a Carrier’s-Carrier selling TDM service to an Ethernet provider selling wavelengths and very high capacity services.  The partners appreciate Charles’s contributions and wish him well in retirement, ” said Jewell.

“I am extremely excited to join ValleyNet and work with the partners I know well from my experience over the last 15 years,” said Keller  “I plan to continue the transformation of ValleyNet started under Charles, and execute on the strategy to reach underserved markets and customers with high bandwidth ethernet services.   I am convinced ValleyNet can be a complementary channel providing cross-network services and capacity unrivaled by any provider in the region.”

About ValleyNet

ValleyNet is a partnership started along the Interstate 81 corridor in Virginia in 1989.  The partners today are CenturyLink, Lumos Networks, and Shentel and their networks cover smaller cities from Ohio in the Midwest through Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania to Washington, DC and the Florida coast.  ValleyNet leverages the capacity of the underlying partners’ networks to deliver very high capacity Ethernet services to the rural markets and provide solutions for all types of carriers and bandwidth users in the region.  More information is available at www.Valleynet.com.