Rank: 26
Ed Whitacre
Chairman and CEO, AT&T
Why He Matters: Ma Bell is rising from the undead, and Whitacre is the reanimator. He started at Southwestern Bell, gobbled up Pacific Bell, Ameritech, and Southern New England Telephone, and then bought the old AT&T at a fire-sale price. Next he plans to bring BellSouth back into the family -- assuming his pal Kevin Martin at the FCC (see No. 25) gives the thumbs-up. That seems likely, so by the end of the year Whitacre will preside over a telephony empire that spans all 50 states, with 49 million customers. Oh, and the new AT&T will own 60 percent of Cingular, the largest mobile network in the country, with 55 million customers. To beat back competition from cable providers, Whitacre is overseeing the transformation of the creaking phone system into a broadband network that can support high-speed Internet, phone calls, and digital video. But to pay for those upgrades, AT&T hopes to create a tiered system in which Internet packets from paying customers enjoy priority status. Just like the old Ma Bell, the new one isn't shy about throwing her weight around.