Air-to-Ground Telephone Pioneer Sets Sight on New Field : Communications: John D. Goeken, whose 1960s microwave towers enabled MCI to take on AT&T;, plans a national wireless technology company to support new local phone franchises.
John D. Goeken’s head has always been up in the clouds, a trait for which many air travelers can give thanks.
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Goeken is widely viewed as the father of air-to-ground telephone communication. As a founder of MCI and Airfone Inc., he sought to make communication possible anywhere people go--an idea that has revolutionized the telecommunications industry.
He’s also won a reputation as “Jack the Giant Killer,” because of the fervor he’s had in busting up communications monopolies.
But now Goeken’s moving on. He announced last month that he’s resigning as chairman and CEO of his latest enterprise, In-Flight Phone Corp., to establish a company that provides competitive local phone service. It’s a task that comes as regional phone companies begin to open their markets to competitors.
Goeken, 64, with large brown eyes and a welcoming smile, comes across as the friendly neighbor we’d all like to have. But those eyes can narrow and reveal the fighter who will dig his teeth into any new challenge and won’t let go.
“You do it because it’s something you believe in,” Goeken said recently. “Everybody comes in and says you can’t do something, so I do it just to prove it.”
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He defied convention and was one of the founders of Microwave Communications Inc. in 1963, setting up a system of microwave towers to provide long-distance service between Chicago and St. Louis to compete with American Telephone & Telegraph Co.
The company went on to become MCI Communications Corp., the nation’s second-largest long-distance telephone provider after AT&T.; He left MCI in 1974 and two years later founded Airfone Inc., the first air-to-ground telephone service.
It was a natural move, blending his love of flying with his experience in telecommunications.
“It takes your mind off everything to get up there,” said Goeken, who has 14,000 flight hours in his Cessna. “But you look around and see that the airline was the last place for people to make phone calls, and the idea just comes right up.”
Goeken won a monopoly for Airfone by obtaining the first radio license for airplane phone service from the Federal Communications Commission in 1980.
He sold Airfone to GTE Corp. in 1986, but quit three years later in a power struggle. He sued GTE over a right to launch a competing business and won $15.5 million. He also successfully petitioned the FCC to break Airfone’s monopoly by forcing it to share frequencies with competitors, winning the right to take on his own brainchild.
“Jack’s always hated monopolies, unless they were his own,” said his daughter, Sandra Goeken Martis, who is chief executive of In-Flight’s international division. “He’s a street fighter who uses innovation as his weapon.”
Innovation is what Oak Brook Terrace, Ill.-based In-Flight Phone used against GTE, employing digital transmission in its ground-to-air service for clearer conversations and more reliability in transmitting facsimiles and data files from laptop computers.
The In-Flight phones also featured computer screens designed to allow passengers to play computer games and tap into information services.
In-Flight currently is the third-largest provider of air-to-ground behind GTE and McCaw Cellular Communications, and MCI believes it will be a big winner. In June, it invested $20 million in the company.
Goeken’s restless nature has once more sent him down a different path.
“There’s only opportunities out there,” he said. “Just to sit there and run a business--you can hire people to do that.”
He hopes to form a national wireless technology company providing expertise and equipment for individuals who want to set up local phone franchises.
“We’re going to provide lower prices and better service” than existing local phone companies, he said.
Telecommunications analyst Richard Klugman of PaineWebber Inc., in New York, says Goeken is still a valuable commodity.
“The guy certainly knows a lot about the telecom industry, there’s no doubt about that,” Klugman said. “Certainly, the guy’s got experience, and there’s a lot of people out there who want somebody who has that experience at busting monopolies.”
Goeken started out fixing radios and television by trial and error as a senior high school student in Joliet, a Chicago suburb. He continued his education in the Army Signal Corps in the early 1950s but has no college training in electronics.
“I’d probably flunk the college entrance test if I tried to get in,” he joked.
His daughter said his lack of formal training has helped him.
“That enables his mind in some regards to be set free, and because he see no boundaries . . . he’ll come up with the most creative way, the most efficient way of doing something,” Goeken Martis said.
Goeken and his wife, Mona Lisa, have been married since they graduated from high school. They also have a 34-year-old son.
But Goeken Martis says her father was no typical parent. She recalls on her wedding day how he sat in the back of the limousine discussing business and how he sent her to conferences during her honeymoon in Europe.
“He’s always willing to give that much blood to the business. He expects it of me, he expects it of others,” she said.
Even if his new venture is a success, Goeken already has set his sights on another goal: forming a medical technology company to help stop human suffering.
“I guess I get it from my father, a minister,” he said. “I really want to do something to help people. You see people die who shouldn’t die and you look around now and see all the technology in hospitals and know that’s the way to go.”
He says there’s no time to waste.
“At 64, you ain’t got much time to waste,” he says. “You’ve got to move.”
