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It was no accident that Bill McGowan moved his fledgling company, MCI Communications Corporation, to Washington. Knowing that the microwave-radio transmission service MCI had developed for long-distance calls would work if he could connect with local telephone lines, McGowan's only hope was to challenge AT&T's monopoly over the nation's phone service. If the Federal Communications Commission and the federal courts were here, he reasoned, he'd better be here, too.
McGowan grew up near Scranton, Pennsylvania. He studied chemistry until he discovered that the top men at chemical plants tended to be businessmen, not chemists. McGowan applied to Harvard Business School, where, despite his fears of competing against Ivy Leaguers, he graduated in the top five percent of his class.
His reputation for knowing how to grow a business brought him to the attention of Jack Goeken, who was seeking investors for his company, Microwave Communications, which offered radio-telephone service to truckers making the run between Chicago and St. Louis. McGowan bought half the company himself for $50,000. Within months, he incorporated MCI as a new company. In 1972 he took the company public, and Goeken left to pursue other business.
McGowan set up shop in DC and began pushing within the FCC and the courts for competition in the communications industry. After breaking up the telephone monopoly, he concentrated on building MCI's long-distance network and the company. When he stepped down as chief executive in December of 1991, MCI had over $9 billion in annual revenues and about 17 percent of the US long distance market.
Bill McGowan died of a heart attack in June at the age of 64, five years after a heart transplant. His successor at MCI, Bert Roberts, said of his mentor: "The story of Bill McGowan is a tale inspiring faith in a very basic American belief - that an individual can set out to do whatever he puts his mind to, regardless of the odds."
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