A subjective list of the industry's 5G executives, technologists and disrupters to watch in 2021 and beyond.

Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief

August 30, 2021

14 Min Read
The 5G 50 to Watch

Last year, just before The Big 5G Event, we compiled the 5G 100 – a list of the people we deemed to be the most influential in the wide world of 5G products, technologies and services. This year we're opting for a smaller list that embraces a slightly broader point of view.

We did something similar in the wired broadband space already. For more on that effort, please have a look at The Broadband 50 to Watch .

Included in this list are many of the obvious industry influencers – the top telcos, big gear makers and companies delivering 5G services to millions worldwide. We've also included a few folks we feel are compelling and just might move the industry forward, though they may not yet be market leaders or even have a single 5G subscriber.

Figure 1:

Of course, this wasn't just a weekend thing we assembled in isolation (though we are back to practicing rigorous social distancing, obviously). The folks weighing in on this list included veteran industry journalists like Light Reading's own Mike Dano and Iain Morris. We also had the benefit of getting suggestions, ideas and feedback from Omdia and Heavy Reading analyst colleagues, including Gabriel Brown, Dario Talmesi, Remy Pascal, Matthew Reed, Nicole McCormick, Sarah McBride and Ramona Zhao. Light Reading contributor Rob Pegoraro helped write the bio captions for the Top 10 and Informa's Francesca Greane managed the project from end to end.

We hope you'll appreciate this list as a conversation starter and you'll let us know who didn't make the list but are on your radar as folks who are moving the industry forward.

What follows below is the entire 5G 50 to Watch, unranked and listed alphabetically by last name. On the next page, we have the Top 10 list, ranked and filed for your reading pleasure:

First Name

Last Name

Job Title

Company

Haithem

Alfaraj

Senior VP of Technology & Operations

STC

Nawaf

Algharabally

CTO

Zain Group

Tareq

Amin

CTO

Rakuten

Enrique

Blanco

Telefonica Global CTIO

Telefonica

Danny

Bowman

Chief Mobile Officer

Charter Communications

Caroline

Chan

VP and GM, 5G Infrastructure Division, Network Platform Group

Intel

Wanshi

Chen

Chair, 3GPP RAN Plenary

3GPP

Paul Kyungwhoon

Cheun

Head of Networks Business

Samsung

Alex

Choi

Senior Vice President Research and Technology Innovation

Deutsche Telekom

Ashraf

Dahod

President & CEO

Altiostar

Dame Melanie

Dawes

CEO

Ofcom

Ray

Dolan

CEO

Cohere Technologies

Erik

Ekudden

CTO

Ericsson

Joseph B.

Evans

Principal Director for 5G, Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering

U.S. Department of Defense

Marc

Ganzi

CEO

DigitalBridge

Ibrahim

Gedeon

CTO

Telus

Shawn

Hackl

VP of 5G Strategy

Microsoft

Adolfo

Hernandez

VP, Telecom IBU

Amazon Web Services

Gyung-Pyo

Hong

EVP, Institute of Convergence Technology

KT

Fredrik

Jejdling

EVP and Head of Business Area Networks

Ericsson

Yang

Jie

Chairman

China Mobile

Mo

Katibeh

Senior Vice President

AT&T

Pardeep

Kohli

President and CEO

Mavenir

Bikash

Koley

Vice President and Head, Global Networking; Head, Technology and Strategy, Telecom Cloud

Google

Kyle

Malady

CTO

Verizon

Durga

Malladi

SVP & General Manager 4G/5G

Qualcomm

Kishen

Mangat

VP of 5G business development

Cisco

Gordon

Mansfield

Vice President Converged Access & Device Technology

AT&T

Shyam

Mardikar

Group CTO

Reliance Jio

Nick

McKeown

SVP and GM, Network and Edge Group

Intel

Neil

McRae

Managing Director and Chief Architect

BT

Takehiro

Nakamura

VP, 5G R&D

NTT Docomo

Seizo

Onoe

Strategic Advisor

NTT Docomo

Nicola (Nicki)

Palmer

Chief Product Development Officer

Verizon

Steve

Papa

Founder & CEO

Parallel Wireless

Jong-Kwan

Park

SVP and Head of 5GX Labs

SK Telecom

Neville

Ray

President of Technology

T-Mobile

Jessica

Rosenworcel

Acting Chairwoman

FCC

Kelly Bayer

Rosmarin

CEO

Optus

Marc

Rouanne

Chief Network Officer, EVP

Dish

Channa

Seneviratne

Executive Director - Network and Infrastructure Engineering

Telstra

Mike

Sievert

President & CEO

T-Mobile

Santiago

Tenorio

Head of Group Network Architecture

Vodafone

Tommi

Uitto

President, Nokia Mobile Networks Group

Nokia

Arnaud

Vamparys

SVP Radio Networks and 5G Group Chairman

Orange

Margrethe

Vestager

EVP, A Europe Fit for the Digital Age

European Commission

Johan

Wiberg

Group CTO

Vodafone

Ziyang

Xu

CEO

ZTE

Jason

Zander

Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure

Microsoft

Ren

Zhengfei

Chairman

Huawei

Contributing sources: Light Reading, Omdia, Informa Tech, Gray Whale Gin

NEXT PAGE:

The 5G 50 to Watch Top Ten List

1. Tareq Amin, CTO, Rakuten

The man Light Reading International Editor Iain Morris once called "the Che Guevara of the telecom industry" has become one of the foremost advocates and fastest adopters of open RAN. Tareq Amin has been charting a future of vendor-independent, cloud-native network architectures since joining Rakuten in 2018 after a five-year stint at Reliance Jio in Mumbai; two years at Irvine, California-based T-Force; and three years at Huawei.

Rakuten's name may not resonate with many American users, but its efforts to push open RAN forward could echo nationwide – for example, Dish Network plans to build out its own coast-to-coast 5G network on that foundation. Further, the Federal Communications Commission has increasingly warmed to open RAN as a key tool in its rip-and-replace strategy to secure US wireless networks by yanking out Huawei network gear.

2. Neville Ray, President, Technology, T-Mobile

Neville Ray has been at T-Mobile for longer than T-Mobile has done business under that name – he joined the firm back in 2000 when it was still VoiceStream and ranked as a distant fourth-place contender in the US consumer market. T-Mobile elevated Ray to the CTO role in 2010, and since then he's helped lead the carrier through three major shifts: deploying LTE, launching 5G and integrating Sprint's assets into its own after the two firms' 2019 merger.

The fast 5G T-Mobile has been able to light up on Sprint's midband 2.5GHz spectrum has put T-Mobile atop multiple third-party tests of 5G performance – something Ray routinely points out on Twitter, where his former and current bosses, John Legere and Mike Sievert, are likely the only ones who can claim to surpass him as the company's most public advocates.

3. Marc Rouanne, Chief Network Officer & EVP, Dish Network

Marc Rouanne has one of the tougher to-do items in telecom: head up Dish Network's efforts to build a nationwide, greenfield 5G network on an open RAN foundation. And, per commitments made as part of the government's 2019 approval of T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint, Dish has to bring this new 5G network to 70% of the US population by June 14, 2023.

Rouanne comes to this role with a couple of decades of wireless industry experience. Before coming to Dish in 2019, he spent more than four and a half years at Nokia helping lead that firm through the 4G-to-5G transition before finishing his tenure there as its president of mobile networks. He also brings some experience on the digital-services end, having founded the French AI-services startup Dhatim in 2008.

4. Nicola (Nicki) Palmer, Chief Product Development Officer, Verizon

Nicki Palmer's tenure at Verizon goes back to the 2G era and that company's previous Bell Atlantic moniker. After a series of network-operations management roles in Verizon'’s wireless and wireline businesses, the company named her its CTO in 2013. Since the start of 2019, Palmer's current title of chief product development officer has made her one of its foremost advocates of a 5G-powered future.

As Verizon continues to expand its millimeter-wave 5G service and prepares to launch midband 5G on C-band spectrum with far better range, Palmer has worked with such partners as big as the National Football League and Walt Disney Studios and as small as various edge-computing startups to develop applications that rely on and show off Verizon's next-generation connectivity.

5. Marc Ganzi, CEO, DigitalBridge

Marc Ganzi comes to this list with a deep background in wireless infrastructure. Before coming to DigitalBridge – known until 2019 as Colony Capital – Ganzi launched Global Tower Partners in 2003 and helped build it into one of the biggest privately held tower firms in the US before its $4.8 billion sale in 2013 to American Tower Corporation.

The need to expand US wireless infrastructure to support nationwide 5G buildouts on new frequencies will throw Ganzi and DigitalBridge numerous curveballs. But Ganzi will also have to tackle an unexpected challenge: completing the company's transition away from Founder Tom Barrack, who left its board of directors this summer after being hit with federal charges for working as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates.

6. Wanshi Chen, Chair, 3GPP RAN Plenary

As chair of one of the industry's primary 5G standards-setting groups, Wanshi Chen has a job that could fairly be compared to herding cats – except animal herders of any sort haven't had to switch to email and con-call apps during the pandemic. This particular herd's next destination is Release 18 of the 5G standard, already branded as "5G-Advanced" and targeted for approval by the end of the year.

Chen took on this role in April 2021 after chairing two smaller 3GPP working groups over the previous eight years. He also serves as Qualcomm's senior director of technology. Before taking on that role in 2006, he worked as an engineer at Ericsson and China Mobile.

7. Shyam Mardikar, Group CTO, Reliance Jio

As 5G nears its commercial debut in the world's biggest wireless market outside of China, Shyam Mardikar should not expect a lot of free time on his work calendar anytime soon. Jio – the largest mobile operator in India despite having only launched its all-4G, all-IP service in 2016 – has been getting ready for this long-awaited moment by upgrading power and completing its fiber backhaul to cell sites across the subcontinent.

Mardikar has been with Jio since 2018 after an earlier stint at Airtel from 2012 to 2018 that saw him ascend to the smaller Indian carrier's CTO slot. His involvement with telecom also goes back to the mid-1990s, when he served as a deputy general manager at India's Department of Telecommunications.

8. Caroline Chan, VP & GM, 5G Infrastructure Division, Network Platform Group, Intel

Caroline Chan's role as a vice president and general manager at Intel's Network Platform Group puts her at the forefront of the firm's efforts to advance 5G's edge-computing possibilities. Chan's work and advocacy have emphasized the ability of both public and private 5G networks to optimize and accelerate a wide variety of business and industrial verticals.

Chan has had this spot at Intel since 2016 but started at the chipmaker in 2009, just in time for the 3G-to-4G transition. She spent four years before that at Nortel, including some time on its WiMAX portfolio that has to have informed her efforts to see 5G's possibilities meet a better fate than did that doomed 4G standard.

9. Tommi Uitto, President, Nokia Mobile Networks Group

After a journey of more than two decades at Nokia, Tommi Uitto has found himself on a rough stretch of road over the past few years as the Finnish firm has struggled to recover from a series of SoC supply-chain problems. Uitto has also worked to position Nokia as a champion of open RAN – and industry support for vendor-independent network architecture now seems to be rising at a helpful time for Nokia.

Uitto amounts to a Nokia lifer, having joined the company in 1996 only a year after getting the second of two masters' degrees. Over the years since, he's held a variety of logistics, operations, sales and marketing roles in both microwave and cellular wireless.

10. Jason Zander, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure

As 5G's edge-compute capabilities turn the cloud into more of a fog, Jason Zander is working to keep Microsoft prominent in the forecast. With the help of the company's recent acquisitions of Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch Networks, Zander is now pitching Microsoft as a partner for carriers looking to use 5G to push edge computing out to clients – and, with its new Azure for Operators platform, to help run their own networks.

Zander's 29-plus year tenure at Microsoft maps with the Redmond, Washington, firm's transition to a networked future. After years of working on such traditional Windows products as .NET and Visual Studio, he's spent almost all of the last decade working to build out Microsoft's cloud services.

– Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief, and Rob Pegaroro, contributing writer, Light Reading

BACK TO PAGE ONE:

The 5G 50 to Watch – The complete list

Read more about:

Asia

About the Author(s)

Phil Harvey

Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

Phil Harvey has been a Light Reading writer and editor for more than 18 years combined. He began his second tour as the site's chief editor in April 2020.

His interest in speed and scale means he often covers optical networking and the foundational technologies powering the modern Internet.

Harvey covered networking, Internet infrastructure and dot-com mania in the late 90s for Silicon Valley magazines like UPSIDE and Red Herring before joining Light Reading (for the first time) in late 2000.

After moving to the Republic of Texas, Harvey spent eight years as a contributing tech writer for D CEO magazine, producing columns about tech advances in everything from supercomputing to cellphone recycling.

Harvey is an avid photographer and camera collector – if you accept that compulsive shopping and "collecting" are the same.

Subscribe and receive the latest news from the industry.
Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.

You May Also Like