My first boss: David McCourt, Granahan McCourt Capital CEO

David McCourt has been one of the most prominent telecom investors globally for the past 30 years. He founded Corporate Communications Network, the US’s first competitive phone company, which later merged to create MFS McCourt before MFS sold for $14.3bn (£11.4bn).

The Irish American is currently owner and chairman of National Broadband Ireland which will deliver the €5bn Irish National Broadband Plan. Globally, this will be the single largest investment in telecoms infrastructure by a government. The aim of the intervention is to revitalise rural communities and to overcome socioeconomic divides.

As a teenager I worked at a gas station, in a boat house, as an electrician and as a landscaper. In those early days you try to avoid work and don’t listen to your boss or learn the value of work. That all changed when I came across my first real boss, Thomas 'Tip' O’Neill, the legendary US politician and speaker of the house.

It was a funny set of circumstances as I had originally applied to be a cop in Massachusetts. They accepted me into their training programme but then reneged as they wanted more diversity. Dad told me to go and see my congressman who was Tip. The district staff member heard my story and as I was letting off steam he kept on writing. He then handed me an envelope and said, “This is a gift. Go to university, when you get to Washington, find Tip’s office and hand this over.”

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Soon enough, I went to the Capitol building, handed over the letter and was told, ‘When can you start?’

I had a little cubicle outside Tip’s office and, over 30 years later, the things he taught me are the lessons that were critical in my business career.

My first lesson was the gift of persistence – I had gone five times to that little office in Massachusetts.

Later, one of my jobs as a 17-year-old was wrapping gifts for the speaker to send out. Tip came by my desk one day and picked one up. He looked at the way they were wrapped and said, "Do you think it would take any longer to make the tape straight and corners neat? Why don’t we do it that way". It taught me that attention to detail actually saves time.

He was funny, charming and it was all about compromise. Every day he would come off the floor, I would stand up and say, "Afternoon, how did we do today?" As he kept walking, he would say "We got half", meaning they got half of what they wanted.

That act of compromise – of getting half and not insisting on getting everything – taught me you can do a deal, one where everyone gets half and they are all relatively happy and that came in handy for my business career. He also taught me that "all politics is local, everything is local."

My intention was to graduate from college and still be a cop. Tip had written a recommendation letter for me to apply to the FBI, but while I was in Tip’s office I read an article about how cable TV would never come to the urban environment due to the cost.

Well, when I was working construction we were doing a job fitting runway lights. Instead of digging up the runway, we made a narrow trench and dropped a wire down. I remember thinking why we couldn't use the same technology to make it cheaper to build in an urban environment.

Around the time there was a bid to wire Boston and the suburbs for cable TV. Permits weren’t given to dig up streets in winter due to potential snow storms and ploughing the streets. So, together with a friend, we went to Cablevision and told them we could get a permit.

We didn’t know what we were doing but a guy who worked in Tip’s office now worked for the mayor of Boston. We got the job and it turned out to be the largest cable TV contract ever issued, having invented this revolutionary method where we made one continuous reel with the cable already in it.

Years later, here I am, chairman and controlling shareholder of National Broadband Ireland, a £3bn public private partnership with the government.

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It is a 35-year, 7,000-page contract, so I needed to use the attention to detail that Tip had taught me. Not only did I have to be persistent, but I had to navigate the contract which was almost unmanageable. It was a brutal process and I was the last man willing to stand. But it was really down to the persistence of the Irish policy makers.

The contract is eight years old, it took four to get it and the world has moved on. When we first signed, the government said that anywhere that had less than 30Mb was what we had to wire and we needed to launch with a 100Mb service. Well, I launched with 500Mb, wiring 260 local areas. I didn’t have to but otherwise the project — delivering a new high-speed fibre network to farms, homes, businesses and schools — would have been dated from the get go.

It just seems that all these things harked back to working with Tip. I didn’t want to be known as the guy who brought Netflix to rural Ireland. I wanted to be known as the guy who instilled change in rural Ireland.

We started a foundation called the Rise Community Fund. I wanted to make sure the communities we do business in are empowered. We gave 70 grants last year to businesses and social enterprises, who will use the fibre to change the community and create jobs.

Forty years ago, I wired two Bank of Boston buildings and it saved a fortune on telephone costs. Lo and behold it became the most competitive phone company in the US. Now, it’s about open access wholesale. Instead of building a private phone company for everybody, you build one super-efficient platform and let everyone on it.

That’s what we are doing in Ireland. We have the best management team in Europe, great customers and partnership with a bold, progressive and forward-thinking Irish government. The results will be phenomenal.

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