Cable and Wireless satellite chief John Miller

The thought of satellite communications is such a familiar one to us now that most people will give it hardly any thought. Yet it’s a relatively new field that has undergone many changes over the years. John Miller, head of satellite communications at Cable and Wireless (C&W), has been immersed in the field for his entire career and seen all the changes; but the one he remembers most is in how it can change people’s lives.

’In the 1990s I was building a lot of digital Earth stations’, he said. ’Previously, they’d been analogue, which meant they were noisy lines and not many of them. But I’d go to countries such as Sierra Leone, where I’d arrive and there would be a queue of people all down the road waiting to use one phone booth. By the time I left, there would be no queue, everyone had access to a phone that worked great and people would come up to us and tell us how they’d been talking to their relatives overseas.’