Kerry entrepreneur warns of dangers of hand luggage - Mike Fitzgerald could be described as Kerry's first serial technology entrepreneur. In 1999, Mike was one of Ericcson's most senior mobile phone networks, or GSM, managers in San Francisco. He played a key role in the introduction of mobile phones into China and held a number of senior positions within the company globally. However, like most Kerryman, he knew that a day out of Kerry was a day wasted, so he decided to head back to the heartland and set up Interwave, a mobile phone software company. Within 12 months, Fitzgerald sold that business for $20m and he then set up Altobridge, a firm which is now creating the technology to allow people use their mobile phones on planes. That should be possible in a few months time. Altobridge is also designing a new communications platform that will survive disasters like 9/11 and last years' tsunami, where land line and other mobile platforms failed.
Mike Fitzgerald says the company was formed during the technology downturn and so it was able to get experienced engineering resources from the local areas including Cork, Kerry and Kilkenny with 18 to 25 years experience in the business. He said this was a little bit of luck because today if you tried to find such experienced workers, you would be struggling. Mr Fitzgerald says his company is able to take on the major international players because of the calibre of engineers among the Irish workforce because of decades of successful research and development. He says that if you can pull these workers together in a partnership or in the structure of the company and they become more partners than employees, you can see better rewards.
On this morning's security alert in the UK, Mr Fitzgerald says that container and cargo security has gone through a lot of enhancement in recent years. But he says that security on hand luggage was beginning to get out of control again, and the airline industry needs to get hand luggage back into the hold of the plane. He believes this alert will go some way to getting all luggage out of a plane's cabin. He says that after spending eight weeks in the US he saw far too much hand luggage being dragged on to cabins.
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Morning briefs - 20 20 Logistics, which has sold five million mobile phones in the Irish market, added considerable value to the €2 billion sale of the Caudwell Group in the UK this week, according to its founder John Caudwell. He told the Irish Independent that the price tag for his empire, which included the British street mobile phone retailer Phones for U, was 'not exciting but fair'.
*** Denis O'Brien's plans to set up a mobile phone operation in Fiji have run into major difficulties after several upheavals at the board of the local company that has a partnership with his own Digicel. What has been described as 'grave discrepancies' have been found at the BA Provincial Holding Company with its CEO and its entire board sacked. 150 staff were also let go.
*** Johnston Press, which owns the Leinster Leader here, has warned that 75 jobs may be lost in Northern Ireland after the company decided to close two printing presses in Belfast and the north west.
