Expert Witness

The pace of mobile innovation is accelerating. The US, once a mobile backwater compared to Europe and Asia, is now the most vibrant market in the world for mobile innovation. The smartphone revolution, the mobile data explosion, streaming music and video, M2M and connected car, Internet of Things, social media, fixed mobile convergence, mobile payments and wallets, new MVNO brands, and an endless stream of mobile applications and utilities have flooded the market and presented new opportunities, and a deep understanding of the industry and mobile connectivity. Competing new products, services, applications, functionalities, devices, channels and strategies, and a new generation of innovators, are fighting it out in the marketplace, and sometimes in the courts.

With more than 30 years of mobile industry experience, Whitey Bluestein has been an innovator, thought leader and mobile industry expert. He has worked with innovative companies, helping them develop go-to-market strategies, cultivate strategic relationships with mobile network operators, retailers, OEMs and others, refine distribution strategies, and negotiate wireless service arrangements with leading mobile operators.

As an established wireless veteran and industry expert, he has submitted testimony, been deposed and testified on the wireless market, industry structure and trends, retail and wholesale channels, pricing and agreements, M2M, the secondary handset market, and industry practices. He has also advised counsel on industry structure, competition, distribution and innovation. Retained by venture capital firms and investors in the US and Canada, he has conducted due diligence on scores of young companies and mobile innovators, reviewed countless business plans and carrier contracts, evaluated business and go-to-market strategies, interviewed partners and vendors, and provided clients with his expert views on company strengths, weaknesses and prospects.

Citing his “street cred,” Bluestein has appeared as an industry expert on CNBC's Fast Money, FM Halftime Report and SquawkBox on wireless industry topics. He has authored or been interviewed for articles appearing in LinkedIn Pulse, GigaOM, Telephony, BGR.com, Wireless Week, Light Reading and other trade publications, and is a frequent speaker on wireless topics at conferences, including GSMA Mobile World Congress, Informa MVNO Industry Summit and MVNO World Congress. Bluestein was a GigaOM Research Mobile Industry Expert and was named a 2013 Mobile Power Player by AlwaysOn. He has been a Judge in the 2013, 2014 and 2015 International MVNO Innovation Awards.

Bluestein’s industry perspective goes back to the initial cellular license filings, in 1982, when he managed MCI’s cellular license filings for 72 of the Top 90 markets, more than a score of joint ventures in cellular service, nationwide paging and other mobile services. He managed the first cellular resale business in the US while at MCI. When the cellular industry began its first wave of consolidation, he was MCI's lead (and sole) negotiator. His role and success in the cellular telephone market consolidation of 1984 is described in Wireless Nation: The Frenzied Launch of the Cellular Revolution in America, by James B. Murray (Perseus, 2001). He later developed the concept of Mobile Virtual Network Operator before the term was coined. And throughout his long career in telecoms, Bluestein has been instrumental in bringing new wireless and telecoms products and services to market.

Bluestein received his B.S. in Business from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (Bloomington) and his Juris Doctor degree with Honors from George Washington University Law School, in Washington, DC. He completed the prestigious (and by invitation only) National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Advanced Regulatory Studies Program at the Institute of Public Utilities, Michigan State University in East Lansing.