Thursday, June 03, 2004

McCaw Places New Bet On Faster, Cheaper Access (TechNews.com)

McCaw Places New Bet On Faster, Cheaper Access (TechNews.com) ""We're entrepreneurs, and we see things that we think ought to be done," McCaw said in an interview. He has been trying to figure out how to get communications into people's homes through wireless networks since he started a working group called Project Angel in the mid-1990s, he said.
He readily acknowledges some of his forays into the satellite and local phone business have been expensive failures, and says that "time will tell" if his new vision will prove successful. McCaw said he has spent the last couple of years developing a technology and strategy, knowing he will face tough competition. "You need to be fairly well organized when taking on an incumbent," said McCaw. "It's really about moats, and they put a lot of snakes and piranhas in there," he said.
So far, upstarts have not had an easy time taking on the dominant cable and cellular companies. "For the past 15 to 20 years we've been seeing people trying to attack that [wireless Internet] business and not succeeding," he said. "As we're walking over the bodies of our brethren, we're asking, 'How can we avoid this?' " The answer, he concluded, is this: "Above all, it has to be simple, cheap and high-quality."

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