Clear's mobile 'coach' has fresh perspective

By RICHARD BRADDELL

He sees himself more as a coach than a chief executive. But in the 25 days he has been in charge of Clear Communications, Peter Kaliaropoulos has mentored his staff into thinking that mobility is key to the company's future, with the result that Clear is now bidding for third-generation radio spectrum.

To a large degree, the Athens-born naturalised Australian has taken over an organisation where the major restructuring is out of the way.

After the most recent financial year saw it lose money for the first time, Clear is back in the black and has set its sights on becoming an online company.

Already, 76 per cent of its revenues come from the business market and 60 per cent are non long-distance.

But the coach is moving fast. As he explains, the fresh ideas he brought from his previous job - chief operating officer at Singapore's new fixed and mobile player StarHub - helped bring a fresh perspective on Clear's role in the mobile world.

He declaims direct responsibility for Clear's decision to enter the spectrum auction, instead attributing it to fresh attitudes he might have offered staff as they undertook a review.

But he is also not offering any criticism of the decision four months ago to steer clear of the spectrum auction. Instead, he says that with the enormous changes inevitable in telecommunications in the time since, Clear's decision to rule itself out of mobility no longer stacks up, particularly when measured against parent British Telecom's ambition of becoming a global leader in wireless, broadband and internet protocol.

Clear has already lodged bids for the 2.5G (generation) and 3G spectrum on offer. Mr Kaliaropoulos sees 2.5G technology as having about seven years of life in it, based on the always-on GPRS packet system now coming of age that may provide data speeds of up to 384 kb/s. But whether it is 2.5 or 3G, he believes British Telecom's global strength in applications development will enable Clear to head off competitors in the market.

Mr Kaliaropoulos has taken what he viewed as a centralised and hierarchical company and shifted the senior executives out to their operating divisions, attaching himself to sales and marketing.

Yes, Clear needs a good network. However, echoing the attitude of Telecom's Theresa Gattung, he is market-focused. A vision and a strategy are not enough these days, he suggests, adding that the strategic plans and visions of Clear's rivals would not be dissimilar.

"My paranoia is in whether the business is heading in the right direction. Are we responsive enough and innovative enough?"

In pursuit of answers to those questions, he has already talked with 29 of the major customers and met 700 of the 750 staff, in between times making two trips overseas.

"Symbolically I highlighted that you must put customers first and support sales and marketing - the most significant part of the business. It has to have priority over everything else," he said.

Mr Kaliaropoulos expects Clear to boost revenue 10 to 15 per cent in the present year. But he is aiming for 20 to 30 per cent in the coming year, which should take it over $500 million in two years.

Growth will come from development and introduction of new services such as on-line payment verification and application services.

Clear's key role as the telecommunications provider in the partnership that created the new Ministry of Social Policy telecommunications network unveiled yesterday points firmly to the future.

Converging data and voice using internet protocol, the network was implemented in record time and is second only in size globally to that of equipment vendor Cisco's own in-house network.

Mr Kaliaropoulos says the experience gained will provide a base for the export of intellectual capital from New Zealand, particularly to other parts of the British Telecom empire.

But cost savings through the extension of internet protocol from the core to the furthest reaches of Clear's network will be vital in fattening up data margins as voice margins continue to compress.