Kirk Kirkpatrick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harold W. "Kirk" Kirkpatrick (born Dec 30, 1960) is the founder and CEO of MDS America Inc. Corporation, and CEO and controlling owner of MDS Operations, an Internet operations company that owns the rights to MVDDS in 80 of 214 Nielsen TV DMA's (Designated Market areas.)[1][2]
 Kirk Kirkpatrick |
Born in Roanoke, Virginia, Kirkpatrick grew up in the very rural setting of Blue Ridge, Ga. After serving in the US Army as a Clinical Specialist he attended Kansas State University with a major in English. He subsequently rejoined the Army 1984 to attend helicopter flight school and was stationed in Germany where he lived for 10 years having left the Army again. After working as Technical Director for the Apple Computer IMC to NATO 1988, Mr. Kirkpatrick started in the Information Systems Division of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty where he programmed client-server systems and built networks spanning Europe and countries of Central Asia and the Ex-Soviet Union, connecting them into the newly expanding Internet.
In 1994 Mr. Kirkpatrick took the first position of Manager of Information Systems for the Public Data Network (PDN) of Kuwait[3], bringing the Internet to Kuwait and gaining a reputation as an Internet expert in the Persian Gulf countries. Mr. Kirkpatrick has spoken on Internet related topics in the United States, [4] Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates.
In 2000, he founded MDS America with Peter Blond with backing from His Excellency Shiekh Ali Al-Khalifa Al-Sabah (Former Minister of Finance and Former Minister of Petroleum for the State of Kuwait)[5] , targeting rural customers for high speed broadband. [6]
As the head of MDSA, Kirkpatrick successfully lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (Docket 98-206) and the United States Congress to allow the auction of the MVDDS band of Radio Frequency spectrum. He led MDS Operations through two FCC Spectrum auctions purchasing the licenses for MVDDS at a lower cost per household than any other major bidder in the auction. When MDSA was sued for Patent infringment by Northpoint Technology Ltd., Kirkpatrick's testimony led to the invalidation of both asserted patents in the case.[7]
Mr. Kirkpatrick has lived in Belgium, Germany, Kuwait, Egypt, Israel, and the United States. He speaks English and German fluently, and French, Dutch, Arabic, and Chinese (Putonghua) at varying levels. He is married to the former Feng Zhe (Amy) of Shanghai, China.
