Another major European telco is undergoing changes at the top, in this case at DT’s central Technology & Innovation division.
Unlike some of the changes at the top of Orange and TIM, Deutsche Telekom’s seem part of a reorganisation rather than forced departures. They were announced on LinkedIn by DT group board member for Technology & Innovation division, Claudia Nemat (pictured). She is celebrating five years at the helm of the division.
Nemat has appointed Abdurazak Mudesir as the central division’s new CTO. Mudesir is currently Group Head of Open RAN and Senior Vice-President, Service & Platform at the German opco Telekom Deutschland and will take up his new post on 1 April.
Multiple roles
Mudesir will report to Nemat and assume responsibility for several strategic initiatives, from accelerating fibre roll out to reducing IT expenditure, digitalisation and the flagship 5G network.
He also represents DT on the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) board and supervise the expansion of the group’s O‑RAN Town initiative in Germany, which was announced last summer to test Open RAN systems ahead of DT’s deployment which is due to start in 2023.
And that’s not all. Mudesir has long been involved in the Access 4.0 initiative: Telekom Deutschland is using RtBrick routing software to act as the broadband network gateway (BNG). It terminates broadband subscribers’ traffic, and provides other functions, like quality of service, lawful intercept and IPTV. The first subscriber went live in Stuttgart in January 2021.
Choi, who assumed the role of group CTO in 2017, will now head up the group’s R&D arm, T-Labs, plus “special projects”. Watch this space.
In December, Kostas Chalkiotis was made head of 6G development at DT in addition to his responsibilities for Access & Home Networks.