HOOPS' DREAMS

In late January, Hooper sat in his office overlooking Yarrow Bay in Kirkland, Wash.-the same digs once occupied by Craig McCaw-and waxed prophetic about the opportunities available to the company for which he is president and chief executive officer, AT&T Wireless Services.

One of Hooper's biggest challenges, he says, has been trying to transform a regional cellular pioneer into a coast-to-coast wireless powerhouse without sacrificing entrepreneurial philosophies. Central to that task is keeping the organization decentralized so that operational decisions are made not by executives in Kirkland but rather by those who are highly tuned to the local markets.

What Hooper didn't mention in January was the bombshell that was dropped last week, when AT&T Corp. announced that for the past three years its wireless division has been developing a proprietary wireless local loop solution. If that system proves itself in trials to begin this year, it could become a major part of AT&T's efforts to enter the highly coveted local service market (see story on page 6).

That decision could mean that the ideals that Hooper and other former McCaw Cellular Communications execs have been clinging to-ideals that fly in the face of AT&T's centralized reputation-could be lost. If AT&T's local strategy goes wireless, AT&T Wireless is certain to play a major role in the offering, and that inevitably means a more corporate structure.

"If we end up deploying this in a major way, it would be done with some more national consistency than we've been done in the past," Hooper said last week.

In the meantime, however, the mission before AT&T Wireless is to continue to build a high-quality national network for mobility services, keeping prices and strategies very local within the broader spectrum of a nationwide, multiservice provider.

"We are moving more toward national consistency but still maintaining a local touch," he says. "As we become more a part of AT&T, it's important that we have that kind of single point of focus because they do things so nationally.

Hooper is the man to see that to fruition. Despite his allegiance to entrepreneurialism, he has for some time recognized how crucial AT&T's parentage is in fulfilling the McCaw vision. Hooper himself points out that Craig McCaw's goals to forge a seamless, coast-to-coast wireless presence would not be possible without AT&T.

"From the business perspective, we've been able to fulfill the dream we set out to fulfill: to become a nationwide provider of wireless services," Hooper says. "AT&T has allowed that to happen. Their balance sheet allowed us to buy those licenses. We couldn't have done that as a stand-alone business.

Hooper is a study in adaptation. He joined McCaw Cellular in 1982 and served in various financial and regional operations capacities, including heading up McCaw's brief foray into cable TV before settling in at the company's headquarters in Kirkland, Wash.

After AT&T acquired McCaw in 1993, Hooper ascended to the top spot when Jim Barksdale left to run Netscape Communications Corp. Within AT&T Wireless, he is largely responsible for maintaining the environment and business philosophies created by Craig McCaw-by the account of one former McCaw colleague, he is the "keeper of the culture" at AT&T Wireless. As an indication of the looser corporate culture from which he sprang, Hooper commonly answers to the nickname "Hoops" and even refers to himself that way.

AT&T Wireless is itself a study in adaptation. At its core, it remains an aggressive entrepreneurial cellular operator that acquired properties to gain strength. It operates both analog and digital systems in the 800 MHz cellular spectrum and plans to round out that presence with all-digital systems in the 1.9 GHz range.

Part of AT&T Wireless' national strategy was to brand all its digital wireless offerings Digital PCS regardless of the spectrum over which they are delivered. In doing so, AT&T Wireless sought to define personal communication services for consumers in terms of what they already knew cellular to be.

"Before we let the new guys come to town with their brand and grab the PCS space, we thought we'd go out six months ahead of everybody and capture that ground," Hooper says. The move rocked the industry, particularly for those operators that had been trying to redefine wireless based on the idea that PCS was distinct.

"I know our competitors were mad at us," Hooper says. "The fun part was that we caught everybody off guard.

"It was a brilliant marketing move," says David Roddy, chief telecommunications economist at Deloitte & Touche in Atlanta. "There's this bandwagon effect, this idea that the new wireless services are much better.

Because of its disparate systems and residence in more than one part of the wireless spectrum, AT&T Wireless has directed its marketing efforts for mobility services more toward promoting digital quality and feature availability, downplaying service names, technology platforms and spectrum ranges. The company is confident that its IS-136 time division multiple access technology-with infrastructure systems supplied by Lucent Technologies and Ericsson-will provide it with a platform for service evolution. And with additional spectrum like that gained in the recent D and E block auctions, AT&T Wireless is well-positioned to enter the untamed world of local wireless access-albeit not via its IS-136 networks.

"Our [mobile] networks have to get a lot better and we need a lot more capacity before we're willing to offer those kinds of things," he says.

Many network operators have dallied with the idea of using wireless as a local access strategy, but AT&T is the first to publicly commit to trying it on such a large scale and is probably in the best position to succeed. But the events of last week could forever change the relationship between AT&T and the former McCaw Cellular, making the latter much more entwined in the former.

"We're still trying to find that balance," Hooper says. "It's a constant battle between headquarters and the field. I don't think that ever gets resolved."