Is Bill Gates Getting Too Powerful?

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Plenty of technology wizards lie awake nights anxiously wondering what Bill Gates is up to and how to grow up to be just like him. Microsoft (fiscal 1993 revenues: $3.75 billion), the company he heads, already owns the operating systems that run most of the world's personal computers. But good computers are not enough in the age of the information superhighway. As a result, many of Gates' new rivals on this front are monitoring reports of his latest ventures, wondering if Microsoft will invade their territory. Last week, in a stunning series of moves, the tousled, 38-year-old Harvard dropout treated them to a waking nightmare of activity:

--Teaming up with Craig McCaw, whose McCaw cellular-phone firm is the largest in the U.S., Gates unveiled plans for Teledesic, a $9 billion wireless global- communications network, linked by 840 new satellites, that would deliver interactive video and other data services beginning in the year 2001.

--While analysts were debating whether this global network was feasible, Microsoft announced a deal with Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, the world's second largest telephone company, to design business applications for CD-ROM and facsimile machines.

--Meanwhile, Gates visited Beijing, where Chinese President Jiang Zemin asked him to help China, one of the last great frontiers of the knowledge economy, develop its information industry.

--Gates closed out the week by announcing a $152 million deal with Mobile Telecommunication Technologies (Mtel), by far the largest paging firm in the U.S., to develop a nationwide wireless network for sending and receiving data from personal computers and other devices.

What is Gates up to? The same thing most communication entrepreneurs are doing: looking for ways of shifting into the fast lane on the information highway as it is built -- except that when Gates pulls alongside, others may be forced onto the shoulder. Within 10 years a handful of major firms are likely to dominate the three major areas of the digital world. One group will provide fiber-optic and satellite networks to carry entertainment, telephone service, video teleconferencing and other communications. Another will supply the programming. A third segment will furnish the software that controls the so-called magic box that consumers will use to access all these services.