With equal parts experience and foresight, Morgan O’Brien took a simple concept 14 years ago and made it into a reality that has changed the shape of the wireless industry as we know it today.
He is often thought of as the “idea guy” behind Nextel Communications Inc. His ability to see the changing landscape in the specialized mobile radio industry led him to create a company to capitalize on those trends. Nextel, which began as Fleet Call in April 1987, has been a constant force for change in the wireless industry since its humble beginnings and has grown into a major competitor in the wireless space.
O’Brien, now vice chairman of the company, is quick to shift the credit for Nextel’s success to other key players in the company’s evolution-notably to Craig McCaw for investing in the company in the mid-1990s and to Motorola Inc. for developing the digital technology the company uses today.
“The most satisfying part of it is I did it as part of a team, and from the beginning, we’ve had the greatest people working together on this,” he said. “As somebody who normally gets credit for the great idea, I would say that that’s of a lot less importance than certain other things. Ideas are great, but you have to execute.”
Without the idea and O’Brien’s pursuit of the idea, though, Nextel might never have been.
“Nextel would not be here today if it were not for the brilliance and the genius of Morgan O’Brien,” said Tim Donahue, Nextel’s president and chief executive officer.
O’Brien began his SMR career as a Federal Communications Commission staffer in the 1970s. He eventually left the commission to practice law in both the SMR and cellular markets. Still deeply involved in the SMR industry and intimately familiar with the commission’s rules governing it, O’Brien realized the industry was ripe for consolidation and opted to begin his own business.
Spending half his time practicing law-at that time he was the partner in charge of telecommunications at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue-and the other half focusing on Fleet Call, O’Brien pulled the first crucial pieces together and proved to investors that his business plan was sound.
“I’ve never met anyone who shrugs off problems the way Morgan O’Brien does,” said Donahue. “He never lets adversity get in his way, and there were hundreds and probably thousands of naysayers about the plan to build Nextel out of these local SMR players, and he did it. He had an incredible vision and he executed against that vision.”
Nextel built on its success, and O’Brien pushed the envelope in the 1990s when he proposed a digital SMR plan designed to defend the company’s customer base from cellular carriers moving to digital technology. After getting the go-ahead from the FCC, Nextel launched digital SMR service in Los Angeles in 1993. That year, O’Brien was named RCR’s first Person of the Year.
But the company stumbled in the mid-90s, owing to technology problems and financial woes. An investment by Craig McCaw turned the company around. With a new executive team in place, the company re-launched its digital network and began marketing a niche service geared toward business customers built around its unique dispatch functionality. Within five years, the company grew to become one of the largest players in the wireless space, competing successfully against competitors it had no intention of engaging a decade ago.
“Most people, from the perspective back then, including me, if you said we were going to become a full-fledged competitor to cellular, I would not have taken that seriously,” said O’Brien. “This is something that evolved.”
In spite of the company’s success, or perhaps because of it, Nextel has constantly faced opposition from within the wireless industry.
“I like to think back on the early AMTA meetings, and in those meetings early on it would be Nextel proposing something and virtually unanimously around the table, all the principal SMRs opposing us,” said O’Brien.
“I think it is a uniquely American experience that people with very different ideas can get together in a constructive context like that and work through them and be friends at the end,” he said. “Some of my best friends are people that opposed me initially.”
With 7 million customers, Nextel is an undeniable success story in no small part because of O’Brien’s idea, his persistence and his ability to rally people around him.
“Morgan is enormously talented on the people side of the equation,” said Donahue. “He’s a real people person. He spots talent, he develops talent, he recognizes and rewards it, and at the same time he’s very demanding. He’s got a wonderful balance of working with people and pushing people to the next hurdle.”
For O’Brien’s part, success can be measured in the company’s impact on people’s lives.
“I just get such a kick from walking through an airport and seeing everywhere I look someone has a Nextel phone, or almost anybody that comes into my house to work on something is wearing a Nextel phone,” he said. “It just gives me a big kick, because I think their life is easier because of the idea we had and all the work we’ve done. … Sometimes you get a little discouraged, of course, because this is a tough business. It’s very competitive,” he said. “But then you see something like that, or you hear a story about someone saying, `I couldn’t live without this phone,’ and you think it’s all worthwhile.”
