Meet Srini Gopalan, T-Mobile’s incoming CEO with global telecom experience

T-Mobile US announced that Srini Gopalan, its current chief operating officer, will take over as CEO from Mike Sievert on November 1.

Gopalan, 55, has a long and distinguished career in the telecom and financial services industries. He has held senior leadership positions at Bharti Airtel, Capital One, and Vodafone. He spent over eight years at Deutsche Telekom, serving as board member for Germany and as managing director for four years, where he is credited with doubling the company’s growth rate and scaling its fibre business. Gopalan had also served on T-Mobile’s board for nearly four years before taking on the COO role in March, overseeing much of the US company’s day-to-day operations.

An alumnus of Delhi Public School RK Puram (class of 1987) and IIM Ahmedabad (class of 1992), Gopalan brings a blend of global operational experience and strategic insight to T-Mobile’s leadership.

Mike Sievert, 56, who became CEO in April 2020, will move into a newly-created position of vice chairman to advise on long-term strategy, innovation, and talent development. “I recruited Srini starting about a year ago with the idea that this day would come,” Sievert told The Wall Street Journal.

Under Sievert, T-Mobile transformed from a value brand into the country’s most valuable wireless carrier. The company’s acquisition of Sprint in 2020 gave it new wireless-spectrum rights, dramatically improving network capacity and reliability, and helping it attract millions of broadband customers. T-Mobile’s market value has since swelled past $260 billion, surpassing AT&T and Verizon.

Gopalan takes the helm at a pivotal time as T-Mobile seeks to sustain its decade-long growth streak amid a maturing US wireless market. The company has raised its annual forecast for postpaid net customer additions and added more wireless subscribers than expected in the second quarter.

Speaking on the company’s prospects, Gopalan had said in a previous interview, “We really like wireless as a neighbourhood in the US, and we have clearly outperformed everyone else.” He added that T-Mobile’s home broadband business has more room to grow, highlighting the company’s plans to scale its fibre operations through acquisitions and other value-creating deals.

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(With inputs from agencies)