Monday October 11, 12:01 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: Arthur Andersen
Craig McCaw Wins Inaugural Arthur Andersen
Lifetime Achievement in Communications Award
First Individual to be Inducted Into New Telecoms Hall of Fame
LONDON, Oct. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur Andersen today announced that Craig McCaw -- founder of McCaw Cellular,
Nextlink, Internext and Eagle River and, with Bill Gates, co-founder of Teledesic -- is the first annual winner of the Arthur
Andersen Lifetime Achievement in Communications Award. The award, one of ten presented at the World Communication
Awards ceremony in Geneva, will each year be presented to an individual who has made an outstanding personal contribution
to the development of the communications industry.
``I'm not old enough to get a lifetime achievement award!' said Mr. McCaw on receiving the award. ``I am, however, deeply
honoured to be singled out among a fellowship of extraordinary people who have done so much to define the century. Looking
forward, the next five years will be more profound than the last 50. None of us will be able to rest on what we have done in
the past, because what lies ahead is likely to render our histories somewhat insignificant. I guess that means none of us should
retire yet.'
``The aim of the Arthur Andersen Lifetime Achievement in Communications Award is to salute those people who really stand
out from the crowd in our industry,' said Thomas L. Elliott III, managing partner for the communications industry at Arthur
Andersen. ``We're looking to recognise individuals who lead rather than follow -- and who have driven major, recognisable
developments that have created significant, long-term value in the industry.
``What we're doing here is building a kind of telecoms hall of fame,' Elliott continued. ``Each individual who receives the
award will genuinely have `broken the mould' of the industry in some way -- and there's no-one more deserving of this
recognition than Craig McCaw.'
Craig McCaw
Craig McCaw is one of the true pioneers of the modern telecommunications industry who, by the age of 45, had built and sold
two businesses for a total of more than $12 billion.
Whilst still a student at Stanford University, McCaw inherited a small cable company, Twin City Cablevision, from his father.
In his eighteen years at the helm, McCaw increased Twin City's subscriber base from only 4000 to nearly half a million before
selling the company for $755 million. Using the proceeds from the sale, McCaw founded McCaw Cellular during the 1980s --
and subsequently sold the company to AT&T for $11.5 billion in 1993.
McCaw now devotes much of his time to wireless operator Nextel Communications Inc., of which he is a director, and to the
broadband satellite company Teledesic LLC which he co-founded with Bill Gates in 1990. McCaw and Gates currently own
one-third each of Teledesic, with a further 10 per cent owned by Boeing and the remaining shares held privately. McCaw is
also founder, chairman and CEO of Eagle River Inc. In addition, he set up the competitive local exchange carrier Nextlink in
1994 and established Internext, a US fibre-optic network company, in 1998.
The World Communication Awards
The World Communication Awards -- launched this year by Emap Media's Communications Group -- provide the
communications industry's first ever global stage for recognising excellence. Building on the successful Winning Carrier
Awards, launched in 1997 to allow business users to recognise the world's best communications carriers, Emap and its
partners have this year broadened the scope of the programme to include additional service segments such as the Internet,
wireless communications and e-commerce.
The Awards were presented before over seven hundred leading industry figures at a ceremony at Espace Secheron in Geneva.
The ceremony was specially organised to coincide with the opening of World Telecom `99 -- the industry's largest forum,
organised every four years in Geneva by the International Telecommunication Union.
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