THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

I first met Matt Desch, who is now CEO of Telcordia Technologies, in the mid-1990s, when he was president of the wireless division of Nortel Networks. As Telephony's wireless editor, I had interviewed him a few times. One of the most memorable was during the 1996 CDMA World Congress in Singapore.

I was relatively new to the wireless beat, having been a general assignment reporter on Telephony's news staff for two years. I was covering a technology-heavy event dedicated to a complex and sometimes confusing sector. At one of the conference's press events, Desch was on a panel of representatives from CDMA vendors and carriers. In retrospect, I probably asked some fairly elementary—or even fairly stupid—questions during the press conference, because after it broke, Desch invited me to lunch.

Several things struck me about that interview—things that stuck with me to this day: The meeting was between just Desch and me (no PR flacks). He wasn't interested in giving me a Nortel pitch, and he wasn't worried about what he would say or how I might try to exploit it. He wanted to talk fundamentals about CDMA specifically, wireless technology more broadly and telecom in general. Desch wanted to help me understand his company's—and the industry's—interests so that I might cover them more thoroughly and accurately.

I learned a hell of a lot that day, as I did in subsequent meetings with Desch: at his Nortel office in Dallas, at countless CTIA events, at the Telecom Israel show in Tel Aviv—I even ran into him at an Irish pub in Geneva one night during Telecom '99. He was always open and informative (even at the pub), and I always felt that his motivation was to provide background and perspective about whatever he was doing at the time—to put it in an industry context.

In July, Desch opened up his current company for the same kind of examination—significantly, since Telcordia is an entity that never exactly welcomed media probing. Senior Editor Tim McElligott and I spent two days in briefings, demos and interviews. In an interview at the end of our Telcordia immersion, Desch was frank in explaining his efforts to alter the structure and strategy of the company—efforts that include some significant changes to Telcordia's pricing structures. That news is included in our profile of the company, which begins on page 38.

Telcordia has needed an overhaul for some time. It also needed a leader who could convince its carrier customers—and its employees—that the company's new direction is the right one.

If Desch can help me decipher CDMA, I'd say he has a pretty good shot.