UTSTARCOM

There's something vaguely radical about Wu Ying, and it's not just his bushy Che Guevara beard. As the CEO of China operations for telecommunications company UTStarcom, Wu caused something of a revolution by introducing an inexpensive alternative to the mobile phone, in a regulatory environment fuzzier than his facial hair. UTStarcom's Xiao Lingtong (Little Smart) handsets may look and act like cell phones, but in China, where the government allows only two firms to provide cellular ser-vice, Wu has had to convince telecom mandarins that they're actually just a wireless extension of fixed-line phones — like household cordless phones on...