Behind a Wireless Magnate

By Jennifer Hopfinger
September 2, 2008 05:59 PM

Forbes magazine features a fascinating profile in its August 11th cover story, “A Tyrant’s Worst Nightmare.” Writer Bernard Condon tells the interesting tale of Denis O’Brien--“a wireless magnate who brings capitalism to the world’s poorest and most violent countries.” Sometimes these cover-story profiles of business men and women can be a bit dull, but this article about a “swashbuckling entrepreneur of 50 who swears often in his Irish brogue” more than holds your attention.

O’Brien heads Digicel Group, a cell phone service provider headquartered in Jamaica that operates in some of the most dangerous places on earth. Coups and corruption don’t faze O’Brien because he knows that once he gives cheap phone service to the poor, his customers won’t let their governments take it away. He’s proved it time and again--in Jamaica, in Haiti, in Fiji, and most recently, in Papua New Guinea. He puts up cell towers sometimes before he has permission to do so and offers phones at cut-rate prices to get large numbers of people using them quickly. His business plan is simple enough--you simply have to work behind razor wire and armed guards and have a bit of a death wish.

But apparently, the strategy works. “Combining shrewd political instincts, a relentless drive to cut costs and a little Irish charm, he's put phones into the hands of 7 million people in seven years,” Condon writes. For example, only 10 percent of Jamaicans had cell phones before Digicel got there, and now 90 percent of the country’s population uses them. The company’s profits are growing by leaps and bounds. And so is O’Brien’s personal wealth--he’s reaped a fortune of $2.2 billion. He’s used some of that money to set up a nonprofit organization called Front Line to train human rights activists on how to avoid getting arrested and tortured. If anyone is an expert in that, he is.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism