Albert Kangas, General Manager and COO
Albert Kangas is one of the leading experts in wireless communications. Starting his career in wireless communications in 1990 with Pacific Telecom Cellular in Appleton, WI, he worked on all aspects of engineering and operating a wireless network. These functions included performing site design, site maintenance, switch maintenance and network planning.
He later accepted the role of Director of Network Engineering and Operations at St. Cloud Wireless Holdings. During this time, Albert guided the team through technology changes, network expansions, system integrations and finally transitions to Verizon and Sprint as the companies were eventually sold to those larger carriers.
Today, Albert is the General Manager of NewCore Wireless based in St. Cloud MN. NewCore Wireless is a full service hosted switching company that performs 2G and 3G switching functions for wireless carriers that do not own and operate their own switching platform due to their cost and complexity. Albert oversees the business and technical operations of the company and is also active in the day to day operations of the network, including RF and network optimization for the NewCore partners.
Roger Schmitz, Controller
Roger Schmitz is an experienced financial professional with over 17 years of diverse wireless telecommunications industry experience. Roger’s prior positions included; audit manager for a regional CPA firm, controller for a wireless company with 250+ employees, and chief financial officer of two entrepreneurial telecommunications companies.
Roger is recognized as a trusted advisor with strong organizational, analytical and planning skills. He’s a proven trainer who has the ability to gain the respect of peers.
Paul Vershure, Site Development Manager
Paul Vershure has over 18 years of experience in the construction and site development industry. The past 10 years of his construction and site development experience have been in the wireless communication industry during a period of very aggressive cell site build out in the upper Midwest.
Paul started his career in the wireless industry at St Cloud Wireless Holdings where he was able to show his tremendous operational strengths by managing the initial build out phase for a Sprint PCS Minnesota affiliate. During the 2 year period of the initial build out he was responsible for the construction and site development activities that averaged a new site on air every 3 days.
Paul’s strategic approach to managing a large number of cell sites has proven itself as he continues to successfully lead the Site Development and Construction team at NewCore Wireless.
Paul and his team are responsible for all aspects of Site Development from land acquisition to tower construction to base station commissioning.
Chris Super, Network Operations Manager
Chris Super began his career in the Information Technology world. His 10+ years of experience have trained him to focus on managing a stable, high performing, and efficient datacenter. Chris previously worked as a Systems/Network Administrator at various technology companies giving him the skills and knowledge needed to manage and operate the Packet Core Switch at NewCore Wireless.
Chris is very passionate about setting up and maintaining a quality datacenter from the network infrastructure to the servers that run on top of it.
Chris played a major role in the set up of the NewCore switching facility. Chris worked on the design of the switching facility, researched and implemented a billing and provisioning system, designed and implemented new data networks; both customer facing and internal core network. He was the Lead Engineer on implementation of all non-voice services including SMS, MMS, Prepaid, HLR, SGSN, GGSN, and Data Roaming.
Chris continues to be an integral part of day to day operations. Chris and his team provide 24X7 network support via network monitoring and on call process.
Stephanie Court, Technical Project Manager
Stephanie Court started her career in telecommunications in 1996 at Cellular 2000. Since then she has held various roles which have included Technical Project Management, Contract Management, Site Acquisition, Regulatory Compliance and Customer Relations at various wireless companies.
Stephanie formerly served as Budget and Material Operations Manager at Northern PCS Services, a Sprint Affiliate, where she oversaw the multimillion dollar Capital and Operational Budgets of the Network Operations Department as well as the Project Management, Purchasing and Warehouse Operations groups. She was instrumental in the Site Acquisition and Build out of over 400 sites in Greater Minnesota and Eastern North Dakota.
Stephanie has been involved in several switch turn up projects, most recently the turn-up of NewCore’s Alcatel Lucent Packet Core Switch currently supporting 300 sites across 10 customers. At NewCore, Stephanie is responsible for all aspects of Business Operations including Project Management, Contract Management, Regulatory Compliance and Customer Relations.
