Meet T-Mobile's new networking team

T-Mobile's longtime networking chief Neville Ray announced his official departure from the company this week after disclosing in February his plans to retire.

And the company's CEO appeared to debut the official team who will take over T-Mobile's 5G network operation.

In response to questions from Light Reading, T-Mobile officials identified the executives in Sievert's picture as, from left to right, Ulf Ewaldsson, Mike Sievert, Mike Simpson, Neville Ray, Abdul Saad and John Saw.

However, based on a variety of social media posts by those involved, it appears that Ewaldsson will spearhead the operation, backed by Saw, while Saad will depart the company. Specifically, Ewaldsson will be T-Mobile's president of technology and John Saw will be the company's EVP and CTO. T-Mobile officials declined to provide any further details, including the company's new reporting structure for its network operation. According to FierceWireless, Simpson is T-Mobile's chief procurement officer, having transitioned from the company's finance operation.

Ewaldsson is a former Ericsson executive who joined T-Mobile in 2019, while Saw was a longtime Sprint executive who appears to have successfully navigated himself into T-Mobile's leadership team.

Figure 1: Ulf Ewaldsson
(Source: T-Mobile)

Ewaldsson takes over command of T-Mobile's networking business at a noteworthy time for the company. T-Mobile is in the process of finishing up its initial 5G network buildout following the close of its $26 billion merger with Sprint in 2020. Next, the company will likely look to augment that network with T-Mobile's fresh 2.5GHz, C-band and 3.45GHz spectrum holdings, while also expanding tests of its T-Mobile Fiber offering.

Moreover, Ewaldsson isn't the only newly minted 5G executive in the US wireless market. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg recently appointed Joe Russo as his company's top networking executive, while Igal Elbaz and Jeremy Legg are in the process of taking over some of the networking duties at AT&T following Andre Fuetsch's departure there.

Indeed, T-Mobile's network team has been in a state of some upheaval for months now. Late last year, the company embarked on a series of "organizational shifts" that involved culling some positions in the company's engineering, networking and field operations divisions.

Some longtime T-Mobile networking executives appear to have emerged unscathed from those cuts and Ewaldsson's recent appointment. According to LinkedIn, for example, Karri Kuoppamaki (SVP of technology development and strategy) and Mark McDiarmid (SVP of radio network engineering and deployment) are still at T-Mobile. But some other top networking executives, including John Carvalho and Delan Beah, appear headed out the door with Saad. T-Mobile officials did not respond to questions about those executives.

Related posts:

— Mike Dano, Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies, Light Reading | @mikeddano