Akerson had quit the top job at Nextel after the would-be sale to WorldCom fell through.
His secret weapon at Nextlink is its chairman, Daniel Akerson, the former president of MCI.
Nextel, incidentally, was run then by Dan Akerson who now is headman at General Motors.
On Wednesday, Mr. Akerson and other top executives were scheduled to make a pitch in Boston.
If Mr Akerson, a tough egg, shakes things up again, fragile executive morale could plunge.
Akerson, a hands on operator, so far gets no credit from Wall Street.
Clearly, Akerson still has a lot of work to do in turning GM around.
FORBES: Leadership, Not Another Bailout, Will Fix GM (And No, It Is Not Going Bankrupt)
Akerson took over Nextel and found that the faltering wireless firm, true to McCaw form, had 15, 000 pricing plans.
Akerson quit MCI in 1993, and he still seethes that the storied upstart ended up being bought by WorldCom.
Except for Akerson, each of the eight other Eagle River partners has been with McCaw more than a decade.
When Akerson started at Nextlink, it had 40 marketing plans for 40 cities.
By last September McCaw had tapped Akerson again, this time to run Nextlink.
In internal meetings, Akerson is said to be hammering home the point with GM executives and employees.
Mr. Akerson said GM has a stronger position in the U.S. market after trimming operations in bankruptcy court.
His operational guy this time was Dan Akerson, who had left MCI two years earlier for the buyout firm Forstmann Little.
Akerson named a relative unknown, Mary Barra, as senior vice president of global vehicle development, to tackle that bureaucracy.
FORBES: Leadership, Not Another Bailout, Will Fix GM (And No, It Is Not Going Bankrupt)
Now she's working to accelerate the introduction of vehicles like the next Chevrolet Malibu, which Akerson pushed (see list, bottom).
Dan Akerson, GM's new chief executive, says the company is committed to electrification and has other electric cars under development.
Akerson said GM likely will also sell a plug-in Cadillac SRX crossover, using a different technology, in the same timeframe.
FORBES: GM Works To Build Back Engineering Muscle, Plans More Plug-Ins
To strengthen ties to Nextel, Akerson ordered everyone at Nextlink to switch to Nextel phones and beefed up contracts to handle Nextel traffic.
Akerson had held top-tier positions at MCI, Nextel and American Express before joining buyout firm The Carlyle Group as Managing Director.
And certainly there could be more relevations about why the whole thing broke down and Akerson abruptly gave him walking papers.
FORBES: Ewanick Failed at GM Because Omission Became Main Mission
Ed Whitacre will step down as Chief Executive of General Motors on Sept. 1, passing the role to board member Dan Akerson.
During a conference call touting the automaker's solid second-quarter earnings, GM announced that Akerson, a board member since 2009, will become CEO.
Akerson is a veteran of the telecommunications industry, having served as a senior executive at General Instrument, MCI, Nextel and XO Communications.
According to his biography on GM's website, Akerson is managing director and has been head of global buyouts at the Carlyle Group since 2009.
The big-company culture has permanently changed, insists chief executive Dan Akerson.
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Then in July 2009, Daniel Akerson was named to the GM board on behalf of the U.S. Treasury, which at the time owned a 61% stake in the company.
"You've got to start to think about where you have the continuity, the supply and safety of your assets and your employees, " Mr. Akerson said during an interview on CNBC.
Chief Executive Dan Akerson said the auto maker was mulling a contingency plan to move workers and possibly vehicle production from South Korea if tensions there continue to escalate.
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