Talking Points: William Morrow

Bill Morrow is a veteran of the mobile world. He led Vodaphone’s European operations and was only the second foreigner to be CEO of a listed Japanese company when he took over Japan Telecom. Now, as CEO of Kirkland-based Clearwire, a company 51 percent owned by Sprint, he is racing to build a national fourth-generation wireless broadband network to take advantage of exploding demand for broadband mobile internet access. Network access will be sold as Clearwire’s own “Clear” brand as well as through partners Sprint, Comcast and Time Warner.

First job: My father passed away when I was very young, so we didn’t have very much money. My first 40-hour-a-week job was at age 12. I worked for the school district where I did everything from cleaning classrooms and mowing the lawns to trimming the hedges and painting the buildings. I did that every summer until I was 15. I remember that with my first check I gave half to my mother and with the other half, put a down payment on a stereo.

First telecom job: After leaving the U.S. Navy, I went to school to study electrical engineering. I was also collecting unemployment, but they told me that to get benefits I had to interview for a job. AT&T offered me a job installing telephones, climbing telephone poles and doing maintenance work. I started at age 21. At 23, when they promoted me, they said I was their youngest promotion ever. I was put in charge of linemen in their 50s. They were tough, gruff guys who called me “whippersnapper.” I quickly learned that you work for the people work for you. I asked them,  “What can I do to remove roadblocks?” I eventually won them over.

Work overseas: I went  to Japan in 1995 to work for a small [mobile] company with just 300 employees. We were a startup going against a huge incumbent, NTT. Nobody thought we would succeed. It’s a very similar story to Clearwire. We were challenging the established behemoths with a new technology. We were saying we don’t care what anybody else thinks, we believe in our product.

As president of Pacific Gas & Electric: My wife’s mother was dying and we needed to be in California. At PG&E I was going to modernize the plant, automate things, promote conservation. This appealed to my core values and experience. I went in there and realized it was more state-run than I was used to. 

Challenges at Clearwire: It’s the sheer volume of work. Last year, we built

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