Craig McCaw
Encyclopedia
Craig McCaw is a Seattle-area businessman and entrepreneur who achieved success as a pioneer in the cellular phone industry. He is the founder of McCaw Cellular (now part of AT&T Mobility) and Clearwire Corporation
.
magnate. He was in the business of buying and selling TV
and radio
stations, which brought in wealth but also incurred significant debts. Elroy entered the cable television
business in the 1960s, and his four sons worked as linemen and door-to-door
salesmen.
When Elroy died, the only company not sold to repay the debt was the small Centralia cable company with estimated 2,000 to 4,000 subscribers, which was in trust. During his senior year at Stanford
, Craig took the helm of the cable company and set out to rebuild his family name. He used the cash flows from his growing cable company to purchase other remote cable companies, resulting in a profitable conglomerate. By the 1980s, McCaw Cablevision was the 20th largest cable carrier in the United States
.
held a lottery for cellular licenses in the early 1980s, many ordinary Americans got rich by winning the right to establish cellular systems in cities across America. In addition to entering the lottery himself, McCaw approached many other lottery winners and bought their cellular rights, which were already considered to be undervalued. Using the same tactic he'd used in cable TV, McCaw financed an aggressive cellular expansion by borrowing against and selling shares in the cable operation. Through continued borrowing and smart management of only the most useful licenses, this wireless land grab put McCaw's operation in the position of a competitive nationwide cellular carrier before the incumbent landline
telephone industry took serious notice of the field.
After acquiring MCI
's cellular wing in 1986, the McCaw brothers sold the cable company to Cooke Cablevision (now part of Comcast
). The combined cellular operation was a significant player in the field. In 1990, McCaw was the highest paid CEO in the United States
.
In 1994, the McCaw brothers sold McCaw Cellular to AT&T
for $11.5 billion. The company was renamed AT&T Wireless
. AT&T Wireless was sold to Cingular in 2004 to become the nation's largest wireless
carrier.
Following the sale of McCaw Cellular, McCaw took interest in Nextel, a then-floundering wireless carrier. By April 1995 McCaw gained effective control of the company contributing, along with his brothers, $1.1 billion over time. Within four years Nextel grew significantly to become a challenging wireless competitor, service 3.6 million customers throughout the U.S. and ten of the largest international markets. In 1999 McCaw formed Nextel Partners, Inc. which was later acquired by Sprint Nextel, Inc. for $6.5 billion in 2006, following a $36 billion merger between Nextel and the Sprint Corporation in 2005.
and internet service provider
market. In 2000, the company merged with Concentric Network and was renamed XO Communications
. The company filed for bankruptcy
protection in 2002.
In 1994, McCaw and Bill Gates
teamed up to form Teledesic
, with an ambitious plan to form a broadband satellite
communications system with nearly 300 low earth orbit
satellites. In 2002, Teledesic halted satellite production; and in 2003, it sold its spectrum
licenses.
In August 2004, McCaw founded Clearwire Corporation a provider of wireless broadband Internet service. The company’s U.S. broadband network is deployed in markets ranging from major metropolitan areas to small, rural communities.
At the end of 2007, Clearwire offered service in 46 markets in the U.S. as well as four markets in Europe.
McCaw, who served as Chairman of Clearwire until December 31, 2010, once said to an interviewer, "Filling a need that others aren't addressing has always been a focus of the companies that I have been involved with."
In November of 2008, Clearwire completed a landmark transaction with Sprint combining their next-generation wireless broadband businesses into a new wireless communications company, which retained the name Clearwire. With the closing, Sprint contributed all of its 2.5 GHz spectrum and its WiMAX-related assets, including its XOHM business, to Clearwire. In addition, Clearwire received a $3.2 billion cash investment from Comcast
, Intel, Time Warner Cable
, Google
and Bright House Networks
.
The new company trades on the NASDAQ
as CLWR. As part of the announcement, then Clearwire Chairman Craig McCaw said, "The power of the mobile Internet, which offers speed and mobility, home and away, on any device or screen, will fundamentally transform the communications landscape in our country. We believe that the new Clearwire will operate one of the fastest and most capable broadband wireless networks ever conceived, giving us the opportunity to return the U.S. to a leadership position in the global wireless industry."
In January 2009, Clearwire
launched its first 4G mobile WiMAX
network in Portland, Oregon
, making it only the second city after Baltimore
to offer a high-speed network at true broadband
speeds. By the end of 2010, the company had expanded its 4G network to 71 markets in the U.S. covering more than 110 million people.
into the wild.
McCaw was previously married to Wendy McCaw
, a California newspaper publisher
. They divorced in 1997 with Wendy receiving a reported $460 million (U.S.) divorce settlement.
McCaw is married to Susan Rasinski McCaw
, a former United States Ambassador to Austria
. They have three children together.
McCaw is currently on the Board of Overseers for the Hoover Institution and serves on the boards of The Nature Conservancy, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, and the Friends of Nelson Mandela Foundation. He is president of the Craig and Susan McCaw Foundation, which supports a variety of educational, environmental, and international economic development projects. Mr. McCaw has also served on the boards of Conservation International, the Grameen Technology Center, the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Comittee, and the Academy of Achievement, among various other organizations.
Clearwire
Clearwire Corporation is a wireless internet service provider serving markets in the United States, Belgium, and Spain...
.
Early life and cable TV beginnings
Craig is the second of four sons of Marion and John Elroy McCaw. McCaw's father was a broadcastingBroadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...
magnate. He was in the business of buying and selling TV
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
stations, which brought in wealth but also incurred significant debts. Elroy entered the cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
business in the 1960s, and his four sons worked as linemen and door-to-door
Door-to-door
Door-to-door is a sales technique in which a salesperson walks from the door of one house to the door of another trying to sell a product or service to the general public. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson...
salesmen.
When Elroy died, the only company not sold to repay the debt was the small Centralia cable company with estimated 2,000 to 4,000 subscribers, which was in trust. During his senior year at Stanford
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, Craig took the helm of the cable company and set out to rebuild his family name. He used the cash flows from his growing cable company to purchase other remote cable companies, resulting in a profitable conglomerate. By the 1980s, McCaw Cablevision was the 20th largest cable carrier in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Cellular telephone industry
When the FCCFederal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
held a lottery for cellular licenses in the early 1980s, many ordinary Americans got rich by winning the right to establish cellular systems in cities across America. In addition to entering the lottery himself, McCaw approached many other lottery winners and bought their cellular rights, which were already considered to be undervalued. Using the same tactic he'd used in cable TV, McCaw financed an aggressive cellular expansion by borrowing against and selling shares in the cable operation. Through continued borrowing and smart management of only the most useful licenses, this wireless land grab put McCaw's operation in the position of a competitive nationwide cellular carrier before the incumbent landline
Landline
A landline was originally an overland telegraph wire, as opposed to an undersea cable. Currently, landline refers to a telephone line which travels through a solid medium, either metal wire or optical fibre, as distinguished from a mobile cellular line, where transmission is via radio waves...
telephone industry took serious notice of the field.
After acquiring MCI
MCI Communications
MCI Communications Corp. was an American telecommunications company that was instrumental in legal and regulatory changes that led to the breakup of the AT&T monopoly of American telephony and ushered in the competitive long-distance telephone industry. It was headquartered in Washington,...
's cellular wing in 1986, the McCaw brothers sold the cable company to Cooke Cablevision (now part of Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
). The combined cellular operation was a significant player in the field. In 1990, McCaw was the highest paid CEO in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
In 1994, the McCaw brothers sold McCaw Cellular to AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
for $11.5 billion. The company was renamed AT&T Wireless
AT&T Wireless
AT&T Wireless Services, Inc., founded in 1987 as McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc., and now legally known as New Cingular Wireless Services, Inc., formerly part of AT&T Corp., is a wireless telephone carrier in the United States, based in Redmond, Washington, and later traded on the New York...
. AT&T Wireless was sold to Cingular in 2004 to become the nation's largest wireless
Wireless
Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...
carrier.
Following the sale of McCaw Cellular, McCaw took interest in Nextel, a then-floundering wireless carrier. By April 1995 McCaw gained effective control of the company contributing, along with his brothers, $1.1 billion over time. Within four years Nextel grew significantly to become a challenging wireless competitor, service 3.6 million customers throughout the U.S. and ten of the largest international markets. In 1999 McCaw formed Nextel Partners, Inc. which was later acquired by Sprint Nextel, Inc. for $6.5 billion in 2006, following a $36 billion merger between Nextel and the Sprint Corporation in 2005.
Later ventures
Later that same year, McCaw founded NEXTLINK Communications, planning to enter the broadbandBroadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
and internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
market. In 2000, the company merged with Concentric Network and was renamed XO Communications
XO Communications
XO Communications is a telecommunications company owned by XO Holdings, Inc...
. The company filed for bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
protection in 2002.
In 1994, McCaw and Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
teamed up to form Teledesic
Teledesic
Teledesic was a company founded in the 1990s to build a commercial broadband satellite constellation for Internet services. Using low-earth orbiting satellites small antennas could be used to provide uplinks of as much as 100 Mbit/second and downlinks of up to 720 Mbit/second...
, with an ambitious plan to form a broadband satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
communications system with nearly 300 low earth orbit
Low Earth orbit
A low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...
satellites. In 2002, Teledesic halted satellite production; and in 2003, it sold its spectrum
Electromagnetic spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. The "electromagnetic spectrum" of an object is the characteristic distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted or absorbed by that particular object....
licenses.
In August 2004, McCaw founded Clearwire Corporation a provider of wireless broadband Internet service. The company’s U.S. broadband network is deployed in markets ranging from major metropolitan areas to small, rural communities.
At the end of 2007, Clearwire offered service in 46 markets in the U.S. as well as four markets in Europe.
McCaw, who served as Chairman of Clearwire until December 31, 2010, once said to an interviewer, "Filling a need that others aren't addressing has always been a focus of the companies that I have been involved with."
In November of 2008, Clearwire completed a landmark transaction with Sprint combining their next-generation wireless broadband businesses into a new wireless communications company, which retained the name Clearwire. With the closing, Sprint contributed all of its 2.5 GHz spectrum and its WiMAX-related assets, including its XOHM business, to Clearwire. In addition, Clearwire received a $3.2 billion cash investment from Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
, Intel, Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and Bright House Networks
Bright House Networks
Bright House Networks is a cable television company, the seventh largest cable operator and the sixth largest traditional multiple system operator in the United States owned by Advance/Newhouse, headquartered in Syracuse, New York...
.
The new company trades on the NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
as CLWR. As part of the announcement, then Clearwire Chairman Craig McCaw said, "The power of the mobile Internet, which offers speed and mobility, home and away, on any device or screen, will fundamentally transform the communications landscape in our country. We believe that the new Clearwire will operate one of the fastest and most capable broadband wireless networks ever conceived, giving us the opportunity to return the U.S. to a leadership position in the global wireless industry."
In January 2009, Clearwire
Clearwire
Clearwire Corporation is a wireless internet service provider serving markets in the United States, Belgium, and Spain...
launched its first 4G mobile WiMAX
WiMAX
WiMAX is a communication technology for wirelessly delivering high-speed Internet service to large geographical areas. The 2005 WiMAX revision provided bit rates up to 40 Mbit/s with the 2011 update up to 1 Gbit/s for fixed stations...
network in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, making it only the second city after Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
to offer a high-speed network at true broadband
Broadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
speeds. By the end of 2010, the company had expanded its 4G network to 71 markets in the U.S. covering more than 110 million people.
Personal life
McCaw was a founding donor of The Free Willy Foundation (along with Warner Brothers Studios) in November of 1994 with a $2M donation. The foundation was formed to re-release Keiko the Killer WhaleKeiko (orca)
Keiko was a male orca / actor who starred in the film Free Willy and was perhaps the most famous of captive orcas.- History :...
into the wild.
McCaw was previously married to Wendy McCaw
Wendy P. McCaw
Wendy McCaw is the owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press.She was born Wendy Petrak in Palo Alto, California in 1951. She attended Stanford University where she majored in history and met Craig McCaw during their sophomore year. They married in 1974 a year after graduation. During their marriage...
, a California newspaper publisher
Santa Barbara News-Press
The Santa Barbara News-Press is a broadsheet newspaper based in Santa Barbara, California.-History:The News-Press asserts it is the oldest daily newspaper in Southern California, publishing since 1855...
. They divorced in 1997 with Wendy receiving a reported $460 million (U.S.) divorce settlement.
McCaw is married to Susan Rasinski McCaw
Susan McCaw
Susan Rasinski McCaw is a former U.S. Ambassador to Austria. She was sworn in on November 30, 2005. United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presided over the ceremony. McCaw officially assumed her post as Ambassador after presenting her diplomatic credentials to Austrian President Heinz...
, a former United States Ambassador to Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. They have three children together.
McCaw is currently on the Board of Overseers for the Hoover Institution and serves on the boards of The Nature Conservancy, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, and the Friends of Nelson Mandela Foundation. He is president of the Craig and Susan McCaw Foundation, which supports a variety of educational, environmental, and international economic development projects. Mr. McCaw has also served on the boards of Conservation International, the Grameen Technology Center, the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Comittee, and the Academy of Achievement, among various other organizations.