Last month, ICO-Teledesic Global Ltd., the holding company that controls the satellite assets of telecommunications pioneer Craig McCaw, named Greg Clarke as the new CEO to help bring ICO-Teledesic’s vision of a global communications system from the drawing board to a commercially viable system. Clarke brings with him an extensive background in the wireless sector. He most recently served as the CEO of Cable & Wireless Communications plc, and has also served as vice president of cellular at Nortel Matra Communications France. Clarke recently sat down with MOBILE SATELLITE NEWS to discuss the future of ICO-Teledesic. Here is what he had to say: MOBILE SATELLITE NEWS: How will you turn ICO-Teledesic into a profitable business?

Greg Clarke: I think I took a unique view of ICO/Teledesic which is that I don’t think the answer is voice. I think we will provide cost-effective, high-quality voice services but the world has changed in the past two or three years. People have gotten used to high-speed access to useful applications, including the Internet from the desktops. They are now getting used to getting that access in the home, in terms of cable modems, ISDN-, or ADSL-type services. They are now getting used to getting access on the move. 2.5G and 3G cellular services will provide high-speed access to smart devices and cell phones. We will provide high-speed packet data access to people wherever they are in the world, whether they are in cellular coverage or out, to allow them to get access to those services so they are not isolated from them. So whether you are on a boat or an airplane or a country where services are primitive or non-existent, we’ll be able to provide you with all the high-speed connectivity to all the productivity-based applications you need.

I see ourselves principally as a wireless data play, not a cellular play with a very large handset.

MSN: Will Teledesic exist as a separate entity, or will it become part of the ICO system?

Clarke: My job is to integrate the two businesses together, in terms of creating one global business, one ground segment and one organization to run it. Our priority initially is to make ICO fly in terms of getting the satellites up, getting the data services online get the customers and start generating revenue.

Our future, however, is also in providing more and more services to those sorts of customers. It will be impossible to provide the truly broadband services required from the ICO system in the amount of spectrum it has, so we will have to launch a broadband system to provide us with those upgrade-type services to give us a future and that is what we see the future of Teledesic as. We do need both systems.

MSN: Are you wedded to the current design of Teledesic?

Clarke: I’m not wedded to any technology architecture. I’m here to keep the customers happy and the shareholders happy. Technology is just a means to an end as far as I am concerned. I’m kicking the tires of the Teledesic architecture as we speak. I have a number of design reviews in place and if it doesn’t meet my price-performance criteria, in terms of what it does for the shareholders and what it does for the customers, we’ll change the architecture.

MSN: How will the services match up with other satellite and non satellite competitors?

Clarke: My view, having come from that market, is that if you never want to leave your desk, you should use broadband fiber access. It’s great. It gives you good price-performance. It gives you highly reliable services. It gives you all the access to services you would ever need.

If you ever want to move away from your desk or home, you need to start considering cellular. If you start to move away from areas where cellular is not available or not consistently available, you need to look at us. I think most people accept that. There is no substitute for fiber if you are consistently in close proximity to it.

MSN: How will the speed and pricing match up?

Clarke: We will be offering services up to the hundreds of kilobits per second using the ICO technology, so we will be broadly compatible with ISDN-type access speeds. We believe we can provide those at the level of price-performance that people roaming on third-generation cellular will pay but will be able to get those services outside of the major metropolitan areas, so we believe we will be able to achieve those levels of price-performance and our initial modeling has substantiated that.

MSN: How will you compete for voice customers, especially in the populated parts of the world?

Clarke: I think if you are largely sedentary, you will continue to use PSTN, whether that is powered by IP or any other arcane forms of technology. If you largely move around within metropolitan areas or major truck routes within the highly sophisticated economies, you will continue to use cellular. If you have a requirement that takes you out over the ocean or flying to strange places or maybe in areas of North America or Europe or Asia where cellular coverage is patchy, we can provide you with a high-quality, cost- effective service. So, we are not aiming to displace the likes of Vodafone Airtouch [VOD] or Deutsche Telekom Mobile and generate hundreds of millions of users. What we are looking for is to generate millions of users who have the sort of requirements where we are cost competitive.

MSN: How big of a market is out there for these types of satellite services?

Clarke: I think there is a sizable niche for these of services. I think there is a market of millions of subscribers. We all know that the cellular market has markets for hundreds of millions of subscribers going on for billions of subscribers over a 10-year period. We need millions of subscribers, not tens or hundreds of millions of subscribers to make this business pay. There are enough people in vertical market niches such as maritime or business people who travel to areas where there is not coverage or people who own holiday facilities or boats where cellular coverage is patchy at best. We believe there are enough of those contiguous niches that need both high-quality data and voice that we can construct a very lucrative business for our shareholders.