CommunicationsWeek International

October 7, 2002

Candace Johnson was awarded the 2002 Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Communication Awards in London last week, for what the judges described as her unrivaled dedication and commitment to the telecoms industry.
Johnson, who calls herself "Satellady" in e-mail exchanges, has built up an illustrious career in the industry. She launched the Astra satellite system and SES Global--the first in a string of satellite projects she's fostered.
Johnson founded Europe Online, an early Internet-via-satellite network; she started Loral Cyber-star-Teleport Europe, the first trans-border private satellite network in Europe. She also started the first competitive operators' association in Europe, Germany's VATM, in 1992, as well as the Global Telecom Women's Network.

"She's always looking for the next thing to create, develop, or promote," says Audrey Mandela, an independent consultant and one of the WCA judges. "She's been a very influential voice for more transparent market structures in European telecoms."
Her success is due to her unwavering and infectious positive attitude, say colleagues. She says her personal maxim is, "Never accept no for an answer; never give up and never go away even when others want you to."
Once Johnson sets her mind on something, she will do it. "Everyone has a special talent and mine is perhaps pushing through things that others can't. I do have quite good powers of persuasion," she says.
Johnson says she is driven by a tremendous sense of responsibility to bring affordable communications to everyone. For her, belief in the value of competition to bring down prices and spur innovation is the reason why most of her work has been dedicated to creating competitors to monopolies. "I use satellites to break monopolies," says Johnson.
Her satellite business sense may have been determined when she was quite young as well. When she was five years old, Johnson recalls getting a Santa claus in a Sputnik on the christmas tree.

When she founded the first competitive operators' group in Germany in 1992, she says she was considered by the establishment as "Enemy Number One" and even endured a smear campaign by one national operator.
"Competition doesn't just come around, you have to fight for it," she says. Looking back, she sees how competition has come about through innovation: wireless and satellite technologies are successfully challenging Europe's former monopolies. But she says Deutsche Telekom's local access business, for example, still has a "false protection."
But not everything Johnson touches turns to gold. She was vice president for Iridium from 1994 to 1995, perhaps the one job she has had at a company that she didn't start. Johnson says she was hired to bring in European investment, but she was disillusioned by the lack of openness with Iridium handsets and didn't believe the product would be good if there wasn't competition at the handset level.
"Johnson was willing to stick her neck out with new technology and new business methods with a new channel," says Phil Evins, managing director of the European Telecommunications Association (ECTA). and another judge for the WCAs.

In March this year. Johnson bought back Europe Online for the third time from bankruptcy, a commitment that she says she works on from 6 am to midnight. While some people might view Europe Online as a "failure," she considers it one of her finest projects. "I know that there is still life in it," she says. "Entrepreneurship is not a way to get rich quick, but a way to build something that has value."
"Candace has an ebullient personality and a 'joie de vivre' that permeates all that she does." says Bridget Cosgrave, president of Belgacom's carrier and wholesale business unit, based in Brussels.
In addition to breathing life back into Europe Online, Johnson is also president of Johnson Paradigm Ventures, a principal founding shareholder in Ariadne capital. She is also a minority owner of FMN, a German telephone manufacturing company, and Alpha com, a wireless data manufacturing company.

Johnson's sense of responsibility was instilled in her from an early age. Her father was a general in the U.S. Air Force and head of military communications. He was also appointed the first director of the Office of Telecoms Policy in the White House, established by President Nixon. Family friends during her childhood included Vinton Cerf, one of the so called founding fathers of the Internet.
Johnson says she'll never get out of the communications industry. She wants her next project to help fight poverty and disease worldwide. "I want to find a way to use our communication networks to banish poverty."
She also has an appeal to all European entrepreneurs: "An incredible amount of money has been spent on bandwidth. We must all come together now and try to keep the value of what was created and go forward with sustainable business models. We must pick up the pieces and save the value that has been created."

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