By Khali Henderson

MegaPath Corp. announced Friday that it has named Jeffrey Pearl as senior vice president of sales, overseeing strategic direction and day-to-day management of MegaPaths direct, indirect and field sales operations.

Pearl replaces Chris Gellos, who was named to the role in January 2011. Gellos came to MegaPath from its acquisition of Speakeasy in 2010. A spokesperson for MegaPath told Channel Partners that “Gellos moved on to pursue other opportunities outside the company.”

Pearl will report to Dan Foster, president of Business Markets. Foster will continue lead MegaPaths channel operations as he told Channel Partners last summer when he returned to MegaPath after a short stint in the energy industry.

A 25-year veteran of the telecom industry, Pearl came to MegaPath through its January 2012 acquisition of IP5280, a cloud-based IP communications provider that he co-founded in 2005. Since joining MegaPath, Pearl has been vice president of field sales.

Prior to IP6280, Pearl spent 15 months at Linesider Communications, another VoIP company he founded in 2004 and which he sold in part to a CLEC in 2005 and the rest to  Cisco in 2010. He also was CEO and executive vice president of sales for ICG Communications in the year leading up to its sale to venture capital firms Columbia Capital and M/C Venture Partners in late 2004. Earlier in his career, Pearl held senior sales roles at Qwest Communications, Frontier Communications and Worldcom.

MegaPath provides a range of data, voice, and security services for small, medium and enterprise businesses nationwide, as well as wholesale solutions to the carrier and service-provider markets.