IMPAIRED VISIONARY

It turns out the sky did have limits. When Teledesic postponed its ISP satellite network plan earlier this month, it sounded the death knell of the dreamy Internet-in-the-sky industry. Though Teledesic had continued to tout a much-reduced strategy to launch a handful of broadband satellites this year, you could see the end of the broadband satellite market coming in the earlier demise of Globalstar and Iridium. You could blame telecom's economic decline, as Teledesic did, or you could blame that and a half-dozen other things, including financial mismanagement alleged in a pending lawsuit. But while blame is shifted and sorted, the less monotonous thing to consider is the impact Teledesic's failure will have on the legacy of industry visionary Craig McCaw. Despite the appearance at Teledesic's unveiling eight years ago that the company and its strategy was the pooling of both the finances and the intellect of McCaw and Bill Gates, Teledesic was clearly McCaw's to run, as more of his money and time went into the venture. And now it is his failure on a grand and very visible scale. It is becoming clear that McCaw bet on the wrong technology and, not only that, bet against the technology that created his empire. The visionary who first recognized the potential of cellular as a seamless, national service ultimately underestimated the ability of that technology to evolve into a high-speed Internet medium. Though 3G is not yet a solid success, it is displacing any practical need for “Internet-in-the-sky.” What we have for McCaw now is just one question: What's next?