The Titans: The Movers & Shapers of 2000

There's a whole lotta shakin' going on in the wireless sector. These top 10 leaders are responsible.

If you toss a rock into a body of water, the ripple spreads out from the center. The larger the object you toss, the greater the ripple effect. The wireless industry has grown from a pebble to a rock, broadening its influence. In fact, the wireless ripples are reaching out farther, lapping over other industries such as content services and the Internet.

This year's Titans reflect this ripple effect. Eight out of 10 Titans last year represented strictly wireless-service providers. Their prime differentiator was whether they offered cellular, PCS, satellite or wireless broadband. This year's Titans have broader reach and incorporate Internet content as a business plan or a strategy.

Since last year's Titans issue, technology has garnered tremendous attention. New standards have emerged to enable multiple digital interfaces and interstandard roaming. Other standards have addressed the need for security measures. One example of the standards that have emerged is the Operators Harmonization Group document, which blends W-CDMA and cdma2000. Then there were TIA's approval of the CDMA Development Group's SIM-card standard and an alliance formed by three equipment vendors to create a security platform and procedures for mobile commerce.

Recent 3G auctions have created enigmas for service providers. For instance, the winning bidders in a 3G auction in the United Kingdom agreed to pay billions for spectrum. But even as they were bidding, several U.S. operators were struggling to hold onto spectrum they gained in an auction years ago but were ultimately unable to pay for. The U.S. operators' unfortunate stories highlight the growing need for companies to find new ways of buying 3G spectrum and remaining financially healthy.

In addition to the technology race, companies are speeding to valuable market sectors through mergers, acquisitions and strategic partnerships. In this climate, competing usually depends on the ability to form alliances with the correct partners and allies.

This year's Titans have found clever solutions to these and other dilemmas faced by their companies. In so doing, they have created new possibilities for the rest of the wireless industry and, in some cases, new challenges.

1. The Mogul
Chris Gent, Vodafone AirTouch CEO

Aggressive growth and innovation are Chris Gent's signature. The Vodafone AirTouch CEO, known for his artful deal making, continues to distinguish himself and Vodafone with market-cornering acquisitions, strategic alliances and big plans.

Under Gent's leadership, Vodafone merged with AirTouch in 1999, elevating the company to world's largest wireless enterprise. But the growth quest didn't stop there. Gent recently led a hostile takeover of Mannesmann, Germany's No. 1 wireless provider. The Mannesmann acquisition adds more than 16 million subscribers to the Vodafone network. Gent also finessed a joint venture with rival company Bell Atlantic to create the largest U.S. service provider, Verizon Wireless.

Clearly, Gent plans to stretch Vodafone's footprint across the globe by gobbling up competitors like a corporate Pac-Man or striking win-win deals with them. B ut Gent's influence reaches beyond Vodafone. During his watch, Vodafone has set the pace for the industry. To keep up, other wireless players must race to recruit value-adding partners and chart expansion routes.

Vodafone is proceeding with the integration of Mannesmann and expanding into the mobile Internet arena. Through a recent 50/50 partnership with French operator Vivendi, Gent plans to establish a European Internet company and a European Web portal.

Commenting on the importance of the collaboration with Vivendi, Gent also illuminated his ultimate aim for Vodafone.

"This is another important step in achieving our objective to become the world's leading mobile multimedia operator," he said.

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2. The Pacesetter
Keiji Tachikawa, NTT DoCoMo President & CEO

While most wireless companies are preparing to offer 3G services, Japan's NTT DoCoMo is developing a 4G system. The mobile multimedia system is being designed to transmit data at speeds of 2Mb/s to 156Mb/s.

Some observers say R&D efforts such as these will guarantee NTT DoCoMo a dominant role among international wireless telecom enterprises. But despite NTT DoCoMo's lead in R&D, Keiji Tachikawa, the company's president & CEO, has not sought to boost NTT DoCoMo's influence with corporate takeovers. Instead, his modus operandi has been to form alliances, especially in the e-commerce sector.

In April, NTT DoCoMo announced its 10% ownership stake in an Internet payment-settlement joint venture, known as Payment First. The joint venture's third-party billing system will enable businesses such as banks and credit-card companies to credit and debit customer accounts via NTT DoCoMo's i-Mode mobile phones, PCs and computer game machines. Other NTT DoCoMo alliances include a 51/49 partnership with Matsushita Communication Industrial to create Air Media, a company that will distribute music on NTT DoCoMo's mobile phones, and a 5% investment in a start-up Internet bank.

These alliances will add content to the company's already popular i-Mode portal service, which provides subscribers with continuous, low-cost Internet service via mobile phones. NTT DoCoMo launched i-Mode in February 1999. By mid-March 2000, i-Mode subscribers exceeded 5 million.

NTT DoCoMo also is looking at global expansion with its $5.5-billion acquisition of U.S.-based Verio, a Web hosting company, and its $4.5 billion purchase of 15% of Dutch provider Royal KPN's mobile phone subsidiary. With i-Mode's popularity and NTT DoCoMo's launch of 3G services tentatively set to begin in May 2001, mid-2002 could wind up the best of times for wireless in the East.

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3. The Dealmaker
Bernie Ebbers, Worldcom chairman

Going from no wireless initiative to a major wireless strategy won't guarantee you the label of a Titan. However, when you do and vault to the No. 2 wireless-provider position, suddenly people pay attention. Add to this the fact that Bernie Ebbers locked horns with BellSouth in a last-minute 2-way fight to buy Sprint. Ultimately, he spent a record (at the time of the deal) $129 billion to take over Sprint.

That's not the end of it. WorldCom's acquisition is awaiting regulatory approval, which could come sometime next month. If successful, that clears the way for further acquisitions. Ebbers is rumored to be eyeing Orange to fill out his wireless coverage in Europe. That may be his biggest challenge to date as other service providers, such as France Telecom and NTT DoCoMo, also find Orange appealing. (In order to gain European regulatory approval for its Mannesmann merger, Vodafone AirTouch must unload its Orange property, probably later this year.)

Quickly assembling this worldwide wireless network, Ebbers is changing the corporate landscape in the United States, as well as changing the world's wireless domain. In particular, it's the wireless-data domain Ebbers is after.

If he wanted a wireless-voice strategy, he probably would have acted before the Sprint deal. After all, he considered possible deals with Nextel and AirTouch. Instead, he hungered for a connection to the mobile-data sector. Approximately 70% of WorldCom's revenue comes from data, and that's not counting the wireless variety. Knowing that wireless data promises to be industry-altering, Ebbers chased after a company that understood this reality and paid top dollar to get it.

The merger combines WorldCom's UUnet division, the Internet backbone that carries 50% of worldwide traffic, with Sprint's network, which carries up to 18%. In paying the 12-figure sum, Ebbers squared off with other potential heavyweights and won. Now, the 1-time basketball coach and hotel entrepreneur isn't just taking on the local-, long-distance-, Internet- and data-service patriarchs, he's also squaring off against other wireless-Internet providers.

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4. The Gatekeeper
Steve case, AOL chairman & CEO

Undisputedly, AOL is the world leader of Internet online services and content. Twelve years ago, Steve Case opened AOL's doors and built a mass market for content and interactive services. At Wireless 2000, he said his vision, which now incorporates a wireless strategy, is to create a medium that will become as commonplace as televisions are today but more useful and indispensable. Since 1995, AOL has grown from 250 employees and $30 million in annual revenues to nearly 10,000 employees and more than $2.2 billion in revenues. AOL also has gained momentum in the global market by operating both AOL and CompuServe there. AOL surpassed the 1-million-member mark in Europe, operates services in Canada and Japan, and will launch services in Australia and Hong Kong next year. This year AOL will swap $350 billion in stock with Time Warner to bring "media-rich broadband services" to consumers and drive the growth of advertising and e-commerce. Case will serve as chairman of the combined $30-billion-content mega-power. Working with such wireless companies as BellSouth and Sprint PCS, Case's content partnering provides a power punch to service providers' wireless Internet initiatives.

Case shatters the old model of wireless business, causing wireless players to re-evaluate how they interact with content providers. Clearly as a world leader in content, AOL isn't going to settle for second-rung status.

At Wireless 2000, Case warned wireless-service providers not to underestimate the complexity of other companies' capabilities and encouraged partnerships.

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5. The Challenger
John Zeglis, AT&T Wireless Group Chairman & CEO

John Zeglis' goal is to make AT&T Wireless Group's services as ubiquitous in the future as wireline phone services are today. Even the division's Web site hints at this objective with a pitch for the Digital One Rate plan.

"It's so simple and affordable, your wireless phone may become your only phone," the Web advertisement says.

Zeglis, a 16-year AT&T veteran and former attorney, has launched the company's fixed-wireless, local-exchange business in areas where AT&T wireline services are not available. He's also expanding the company's international business and plans to gain a foothold in the wireless-data market by investing in e-businesses.

The crucial part of Zeglis' strategy involves combining the company's mobile and fixed-wireless networks. The company recently debuted residential services in Fort Worth, TX. AT&T Wireless' local services include high-speed Internet access and long-distance and local voice services. Eventually, the company's residential customers will be able to use AT&T Wireless' services on the road and at home, as a low-cost alternative to the services of AT&T's wired competitors.

Zeglis also has given investors a choice. Under his leadership, AT&T Wireless held an IPO of 360 million shares of its tracking stock. The IPO debut on April 26 set a record, according to CNN, raising $10.6 billion on the first day of the offering.

The company's ultimate value, though, depends, at least in part, upon its ability to meet Zeglis' goal of taking its phones where wireless has never or rarely been before — and to accomplish this feat before one of its competitors does.

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6. The Integrator
Alain Rossman, Phone.com founder, chairman & CEO

Enabling the convergence of the Internet and wireless telephony is what Phone.com is all about. Working with the leading wireless telecommunications companies as well as multiple device manufacturers, Alain Rossman built his company from the ground up, combining the power of Internet connectivity and wireless telephony to provide online-information access to wireless subscribers, anytime, anywhere.

Phone.com's technical leadership has produced a family of robust products designed for network infrastructure and embedded devices. Supporting open standards, Phone.com co-founded the WAP Forum and is offering a complete WAP-ready product line, including microbrowser, server and software-development kit.

Meanwhile, Rossman has been amassing acquisitions and has spent almost $2 billion on such companies as @Motion, Apion, Onebox.com and Paragon. In addition, the company has licensed its UP.Browser to more than 20 wireless-phone manufacturers in North America, Europe, Korea and Japan, including Alcatel, LGIC, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Samsung, Siemens and Sony.

Rossman's latest flurry of acquisitions has been geared toward creating a universal messaging system. The system is designed to maximize the synergy between voice and e-mail, allowing applications to flow from a mobile handset to a PDA to a desktop PC, without touching a button. According to Rossman, universal messaging will bring WAP technology to the forefront of the wireless industry, redefining its landscape. Rossman envisions his company as the next generation of infrastructure providers in which the infrastructure is in the software, not the hardware. Ultimately, Rossman sees a time when customers won't be able to distinguish between a telephone company and an Internet company.

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7. The Virtuoso
Richard Branson, Virgin Group chairman & president

In the 1990s, the Internet gave birth to a litter of virtual businesses, including what is being touted as the first virtual mobile-telephone company. The company, known as Virgin Mobile, emerged in late 1999. With it came the concept of entrepreneurs running wireless-telecom businesses without owning networks.

The man behind the idea is Richard Branson. He is the chairman & president of the Virgin Group, the parent company of more than 200 enterprises. Branson formed Virgin Mobile through a 50/50 partnership with One-2-One, a British service provider. One-2-One provided the network, and the Virgin Group furnished the marketing and customer service.

The upside of the partnership for One-2-One is the ability to generate profits from previously unused network space. For the Virgin Group, the plus is a chance to offer branded wireless services without the costs and build-out periods associated with owning a network.

Mobile commerce is also a way for Branson to hawk the wares of his numerous businesses. For instance, subscribers to Virgin Mobile's Virgin Xtras package can use wireless phones to book flights on a Virgin Group subsidiary's airline, listen to CDs sold by another subsidiary or listen to Virgin's Internet-based radio station.

Virgin Mobile is offering consumers a telephone service without monthly service fees and an array of service options including call waiting and international roaming, and consumers are jumping all over the offer. In March, after five months of operation, the virtual mobile operator had more than 200,000 customers. That kind of growth bodes well for the future of the burgeoning virtual mobile sector.

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8. The Navigator
Greg Williams, SBC Technology Resources vice president of wireless systems

If wearing multiple hats were a business fashion statement, Greg Williams' would run on for paragraphs. At SBC, Williams directs a team responsible for providing systems expertise for the company. The job is a big deal when you consider that SBC serves 11.2 million wireless customers. Adding BellSouth's 5.3 million wireless customers would fill in some blanks in SBC's nationwide strategy. Williams' team handles wireless-system research,concept prototyping and verification of wireless systems, architectures and prod ucts for SBC's subsidiaries worldwide.

Williams also oversees SBC's technical-standards work for wireless and wireline standards. He extends his influence in the wireless industry by serving on two critical and high-level associations. He's chairman emeritus of the UWCC. Working with the association, Williams evangelizes to more than 130 service providers and vendors that support IS-136. As early as two years ago, when it was fashionable to play the them-vs.-us card in the CDMA-TDMA debate, Williams challenged the industry to look to the bigger issues, claiming that the air-interface issue would resolve itself, and services and applications would be the keys to future customers.

His third hat is potentially his most influential, that of chairman of the WAP Forum Board of Directors. He began working with the group before many in the industry even knew what WAP stood for, let alone cared that it be promoted. He has been instrumental in growing the association to more than 400 member companies and promoting the importance behind the standard for the wireless industry.

Finally, Williams recently was elected to the board of directors for the Messaging Protocol Forum (SMPP Development Forum).

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9. The Developer
Dan Akerson, Nextlink chairman & CEO

Dan Akerson has said he's grooming Nextlink to compete with telecom giants such as WorldCom and AT&T. The aspiration may seem to be blind ambition when you consider that Nextlink reaps annual sales revenues of less than $1 billion. On the other hand, Akerson's track record hints that such mammoth ambitions are anything but blind.

Take, for example, his 3-year stint as chairman and CEO of Nextel. When Akerson took the post in 1996, Nextel had several thousand digital subscribers and revenue of $333 million. By 1999 the company's subscriber list had grown to nearly four million and its annual revenue to $3.02 billion.

At Nextlink, where he assumed leadership in September 1999, Akerson is in a similar position. This time, he's directing the company to complement its broadband-wireless services with Internet offerings and add large corporate customers to its base of small and medium size businesses.

During a recent interview with Wireless Review, Akerson said the Nextlink board initially hired him because they had confidence he could set a strategic direction for the company.

One sign of this strategy coming to fruition was Nextlink's January announcement of a pending merger with Concentric Network. The proposed merger would add e-commerce, Web hosting and other Internet-data services to Nextlink's broadband network. When the merger was announced, Akerson said the combined company would compete head-to-head with Fortune 1000 companies.

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10. The Engineer
Chris Galvin, Motorola CEO

If you were the engineer on a runaway freight train, you might feel a little like Chris Galvin did almost 18 months ago. As CEO he watched the company that had dominated the land-mobile and cellular industries for years send off warning signals. Suddenly, almost as if a switch had been flipped, the train was off the tracks. The company was undergoing internal and external strife. Its lunch was being eaten by newer, more nimble companies, particularly in the wireless-handset market. The company that had shown tremendous innovation in the 1980s was at risk of becoming an also-ran phone manufacturer. The company's stock plummeted at a time when only dim-witted technology companies seemed to be losing money.

A weaker individual might have collected his golden parachute and high-tailed it. Not Chris Galvin. He stood strong when others doubted him and the company.

In the last year, Galvin masterminded some huge changes in corporate structure. "Warring tribe" mentality, a common internal reaction to technology issues, was slashed out of the corporate philosophy. No longer would divisions compete against each other for parts and budget money. They would work together to re-establish the company as a well-oiled machine poised for the future. Likewise, the company would invest in what had made it a champion in earlier decades — innovation. If that required the company to look outside its own walls, it would. In the last year, Motorola has struck deals with such companies as Cisco, Lucent and Sun. Finally, Galvin made the decision to pull the plug on the flat-lining Iridium, further streamlining the company. In handset sales, the company has re-emerged like a phoenix from the ashes. The company's digital phone sales were up 65% for the fourth quarter of 1999 and 85% for the year. Motorola has regained position as one of the top three producers of phones and has revealed plans to put the screws to the competitors.