Calling ahead: Bandwidth has something wireless giants don't--cellphones that make calls over the Internet.

• Author: Baverman, Laura
• Position: FEATURE - Bandwidth.com Inc - Company overview - Statistical data

His cycling team was only a few hours into its cross-country race when a squad of eight riders pulled alongside them. David Morken was leading a group of four amateurs in Race Across America, a 3,000-mile trek from Oceanside, Calif., to Annapolis, Md. The octet consisted of pros competing in a different division of the same event. Morken turned to his friend and business partner John Murdock and issued a challenge: Let's ditch the old strategy and stay up all night competing against some of the fastest riders in the world for as long as possible. "We had no idea if we'd even survive," Murdock says. "But we took the risk." Morken's men eventually tired and were passed--but not before building a two-hour lead on the rest of the amateurs. That was enough to win their division five days later.

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Taking risks isn't rare for Morken, 44. He proposed to his wife, Chrishelle, 27 days after they met. He started Bandwidth.com Inc. fresh out of the Marines, with little savings and a pregnant wife. Those gambles paid off. Raleigh-based Bandwidth will rake in $100 million of revenue this year, and he and Chrishelle are still hitched and have six children. But not all his risks reap rewards. Two years ago, he attempted to swim the English Channel, something fewer people tackle in a year, on average, than try to climb Mount Everest in a day. He trained for months, planning his daily schedule around two long swims. But four hours of battling crashing waves and 58-degree water was too much. He became hypothermic and had to be rescued.

The experience did nothing to dampen his daring. Bandwidth recently entered the cellphone market by launching Republic Wireless, challenging the dominance of industry giants such as Dallas-based AT&T Inc., New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. and Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint Corp.--a task many have tried. Few have triumphed. But Bandwidth invested five years of research, millions of dollars and nearly half of its 340 employees to create and launch Republic because it believes it has an edge: It's the first to offer cellphones that make calls over wireless Internet--or Wi-Fi--networks, drastically reducing the cost of service.

"He's one of the most impressive people I've met in the industry," says Blair Levin, a Bandwidth investor, former Federal Communications Commission chief of staff and fellow at the Aspen Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "I'm very impressed by the way David and his team have looked honestly at the challenges and tried to make the experience better for consumers." If the possibilities of this new technology are large, however, so have been the problems. In February, The Wall Street Journal called Republic "mediocre," lamenting dated technology, dropped calls and lackluster customer service. "Nobody gets it right on the first try," Levin says, "but they are getting better each time." They had better, or Republic could sink rather than swim.

Morken was born in Los Angeles to a family that liked to climb--by the age of 18, he had reached the tops of all the Tetons, a range of the Rocky Mountains along the Wyoming-Idaho border. The Morkens moved to New York and then Oklahoma following his father, a professor of government. After graduating from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., with a bachelor's in government, he joined the Marine Corps Reserve and attended Notre Dame Law School. By the time he left South Bend, Ind., in 1994, he was fascinated with the Internet, which had just started to be used for commercial means. He created efiling.com, an online tax service, but had to shut it down after 18 months when he was called up for active duty. While...