Charlie Townsend’s telecom career began in 1986 when he was named CEO of Providence Journal Telecommunications with interests in both cable TV and cellular businesses.
In 1989, Charlie founded the Atlantic Cellular Company. Atlantic Cellular was the first cellular operator focused on acquiring rural cellular markets, quickly growing to become the fourth largest wireless carrier in New England prior to its sale to Rural Cellular Corporation in 1998. While running Atlantic Cellular, Charlie founded and was CEO of Hawaiian Wireless. Hawaiian Wireless began operations in 1996 as the first digital cellular operator in the United States.
From 2002-2014, Charlie was the President and CEO of Aloha Partners. Aloha Partners was the largest owner of UHF-TV channels in the United States until the spring of 2008 when it sold ITS 700MHz spectrum to AT&T. Aloha pioneered using UHF-TV for wireless broadband in Phoenix in 2006. Aloha also pioneered using UHF-TV to send TV channels to smartphones in Las Vegas, NV in 2007. In 2014 Aloha sold its Advanced Wireless Service frequencies to AT&T.
Charlie is currently the General Partner of Bluewater Wireless, the fourth largest spectrum buyer in the FCC’s 600 MHz auction. For more than two decades, he has and continues to serve on the CTIA Board of Directors, and from 2010 to 2016 he served on the Board of Directors for the Wireless History Foundation. Charlie also serves on the Board of Directors of Gogo, Inc and Zebra Imaging Corp. He holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School. In 2017, Charlie was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame at the awards ceremony in San Francisco.