Rick Barlow: No wires.

• Author: Scholl, Barry
• Position: People - Brief Article

Looking out the window of his office in east downtown, Rick Barlow has a first-class view of the city below. But even without looking out the window, Barlow, the local general manager of Cricket Wireless, has a unique perspective on the cellular market; all the 25-year industry veteran has to do is swivel his chair to survey the evolution of phones and pagers. Each unit in his collection tells a story. As a group, the electronic devices trace both the extraordinary growth of communications technology over the past three decades and the Utah native's own career path.

Hoisting a relic from the pre-cellular era that could easily double as an anvil, Barlow explains that it dates from the mid-1970s, she same era as the Gary Gilmore execution. At that time the Deseret News asked Barlow's then-employer, General Telephone, to outfit its reporters with portable phones so they could call in dispatches from the state prison. Several years later, when Barney Clark became the world's first recipient of an artificial heart, Barlow likewise equipped physicians and PR staff at the U. of U. Hospital with pagers, And then there was the time, in 1986, when billionaire industrialist Jon Huntuman Sr. asked Barlow to install a car phone in his Mercedes. Along the way, Barlow began amassing his collection of communication devices. "Every time a new technology came out, I kept one of the old ones; it wasn't a conscious effort," he shrugs.

Barlow's reputation as a wireless pioneer was made during his stints with a number of telecom companies, including AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS and USWest. He launched Cricket in the Salt Lake market in December 2000.

Although Cricket doesn't offer Web access or long-distance service, and its local coverage is limited to the four-county area of the Wasatch Front, its...