Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV) named David Claassen vice president of core engineering and Brian Smith vice president of network deployment, the company announced March 2.

The pair will work on the team building and implementing MSV’s planned hybrid satellite-ancillary terrestrial component services (ATC) network that will provide voice and data communications across North and South America using handsets the size of cellular phones.

Prior to joining MSV, Claassen spent seven years as the vice president of engineering development at Nextel Communications, where he was responsible for the technical design and development of all of Nextel’s integrated network systems and services. Smith served as senior director for Nextel’s Network Engineering organization, where he led the design and construction of all Nextel Mobile Switching offices.