Srinivasan Gopalan, a Brit who's currently leading Deutsche Telekom's German business, appears to be in line to take over T-Mobile's US operations when the company's current CEO, Mike Sievert, departs.
Gopalan "is the heir apparent," said Analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics. Entner is a longtime veteran in the US wireless industry and has deep ties to the leadership of most of the nation's big wireless network operators.
"The board is comfortable" with Gopalan, Entner said, noting that Gopalan is "a process optimization guy" and would likely bring that skill to play in T-Mobile's US business.
"I think he would have a lot of fun in the US doing that," Entner said.
Puzzle pieces
Gopalan is set to become T-Mobile's COO on March 1, the US company announced Monday. That's the same job that Sievert had before he succeeded John Legere as T-Mobile's CEO in 2020.
Gopalan's new position as COO would appear to put him ahead of two other T-Mobile executives: Callie Field and Jon Freier. Both were widely viewed as potential replacements for Sievert.
Sievert's contract with T-Mobile ends in 2028.
Gopalan's new job would appear to signal an interest by T-Mobile's parent company – Germany's Deutsche Telekom – to tighten its control of its US operations, rather than to pass leadership to one of T-Mobile's existing, US-based executives.
Deutsche Telekom gained control over T-Mobile in 2023.
Coming to America
Gopalan – widely known as Srini – was born in 1970. His career began with notable stints at CapitalOne, T-Mobile and Vodafone in the UK before he joined Bharti Airtel in India to lead that company's consumer business. From 2017 to 2020, Srini Gopalan was responsible for Deutsche Telekom's European segment, and then in 2020 he became managing director of Telekom Deutschland, Deutsche Telekom's German business.
In 2021 he joined the board of directors of T-Mobile in the US.
In a release, T-Mobile said Gopalan would report to Sievert and would lead "the company's technology initiatives and go-to-market operations across both consumer and business groups."
Most of T-Mobile's top executives – Jon Freier (president of its consumer group), Callie Field (president of its business group) and Ulf Ewaldsson (president of technology) – will report directly to Gopalan.
"I look forward to jumping in to help drive the ongoing transformation in the consumer and business areas and to orchestrate the delivery of technology solutions and value," Gopalan said in the release.
Game of thrones
Leadership changes are almost always significant events in a company's corporate timeline. They often signal a new strategy or a change in focus.
For T-Mobile, Legere's appointment as the company's CEO in 2012 kicked off a wildly impressive run that culminated in T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint. Sievert took over as CEO just as that deal closed, and has helped navigate T-Mobile to reach a historic market capitalization of around $261 billion.
Of course, Gopalan isn't the only executive gunning for a promotion in the US wireless industry.
At Verizon, Sowmyanarayan Sampath (head of the company's consumer business) is widely seen as next in line to succeed CEO Hans Vestberg.
And at AT&T, Jeff McElfresh is now the company's COO and is presumably the next in line to replace CEO John Stankey.