Chuck Manto Bio -- Chuck Manto Consulting

Chuck Manto -- Entrepreneurship and Broadband Telecommunications Consulting

Assisting entrepreneurs and their investors to launch products, services and companies from a National Historic Register executive retreat center in Cumberland, Maryland. Received 4 patents in telecommunications and computer mass storage, have others pending (in telecommunications services and EMP protection) and assisted other entrepreneurs and investors with their intellectual property strategies. Developed valuation methodology accepted by the US DOD, countries, and companies participating in industrial defense conversion. Facilitated due diligence of over 200 deals, managed a venture capital service, a revolving loan fund, an economic development corporation, a computer mass storage manufacturer and broadband CLEC.

Much of my work life, whether in the public or private sectors, has been an attempt to discover unmet needs and meet them in ways that are self-sustaining. For entrepreneurs, this means ensuring that approaches to services and markets add value and protect their efforts by growing know-how and intellectual property such as patents. My own patents cover market-based approaches to provide telecommunications universal service and sponsored service to users not served by conventional government approaches. These make it possible for companies to profitably provide free broadband (high-speed Internet) and on-demand telecommunications based services in emergency communications, telemedicine and education. See www.uspto.gov, click on patents, and use “Manto” as a search term for telecom and I.T. patents. See also www.stop-EMP.com.

I have also been able to use these business development strategies to help communities with their economic development interests. I have developed critical infrastructure, relationships, policies and capital that support entrepreneurs and their communities. This includes companies I organized to provide systems to protect electronics and infrastructure from intentional electromagnetic interference such as electromagnetic pulse (EMP). See presentations to amateur radio community in March 2006 and Public Technology Institute in May 2006.

Recently, I led the effort of 12 rural counties in Maryland to create a broadband (high speed Internet) deployment strategy that included applications in on-demand emergency services communications. These broadband reports appear on the websites attached to the following pages: http://www.tccwmd.org/news.html, http://www.marylandtedco.org/_media/pdf/broadbandinruralmd/ESPressRelease.pdf http://www.marylandtedco.org/_media/pdf/broadbandinruralmd/GovLtrEShore.pdf http://www.marylandtedco.org/broadbandinmd/westernmd.cfm and http://www.marylandtedco.org/broadbandinmd/easternmd.cfm. They contain recommendations that make it possible to deploy best-in-class networks from the last mile to diverse and survivable fiber optic backbone routes in the near term. They also include practical applications from community leaders and corporations that make this infrastructure understandable, fundable, and sustainable in the long term. This includes recommendations for the use of broadband for on-demand emergency communications. A demonstration in August 2003 was documented in the Cumberland Times-News. See http://www.times-news.com/articles/2003/08/06/community/emergency_resources_at_fingert.txt.

I have been active in private sector business development and public sector economic development since 1981. In Chicago, I founded a computer mass-storage design and manufacturing company. We received a patent for a robotic arm approach to mass storage juke boxes and were the first to design, build and sell removable media storage sub-systems including fault tolerant versions for Convergent Technology computers using our own SCSI host adaptors. At the same time, I volunteered to co-found with Jack Sheehan of IL Bell the Friends of Small Business which coordinated economic and community development groups across the city. Subsequently, I developed and led Gartner Group's Venture Capital Service heading due-diligence for over 200 business plans. While there, I volunteered assistance to companies in rural Michigan with business support that led to joining Marquette County's Economic Development Corporation as its executive director managing a revolving loan fund, leading the initiative to eliminate a counter-productive state sales and use tax on airlines, and creating wide area network pilot projects in health-care and public safety.

Afterwards, I worked for private firms developing joint ventures between American firms and those in the former Soviet Union under the Nunn-Lugar program's Industrial Defense Conversion initiatives. These included manufacturing, telecommunications and alternative energy projects between the United States and Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

After the Telecommunications Act of 1996, I managed operations including customer care and engineering for a broadband CLEC. We successfully deployed switches and DSL equipment at more than 100 sites across VA, MD and DC in less than nine months. This unusual combination of private and public sector experience can be helpful for those trying to solve tough problems in new markets that span both public and sectors such as energy, transportation, telemedicine, public safety and local government investments in telecommunications infrastructure. My associates and I enjoy challenges in these areas and welcome your inquiries.

Contact: Chuck@ChuckManto.com or call 301 777-3069 (230 Baltimore Ave., Cumberland, MD 21502); 410 757-7711 (1598 D Whitehall Road, Annapolis, MD 21401), or mobile number 410 991-1469.