Nokia Siemens Networks has appointed Ashish Chowdhary to head the services business at Nokia Siemens Networks, from October 1. He replaces Rajeev Suri who is taking the role of CEO.
Chowdhary, is currently responsible for managed services and will join the company’s executive board and be based in Noida, near New Delhi, India.
“As head of one of the fastest growing segments within services and a proven leader, Ashish is the natural successor to Rajeev,” said Simon Beresford-Wylie, Nokia Siemens Networks’ exiting chief executive officer.
The services division will face increasing pressure over the next five years, CTO Mika Vehvilainen warned as the uptake of mobile data services increases. Speaking at the Broadband World Forum Europe in Paris he said that the borderline between operators and vendors is changing, with the onus being on network vendors to be more consumer-focused.
He also forecast that mobile data traffic growth will outpace fixed-line growth by a factor of ten in the next five years. “Mobile data network traffic will be up 300-fold in the next five years, in fixed it will go up 30 to 40 times. By 2015 we will effectively be operating mobile data networks,” he said.
Chowdhary joined Nokia in December 2003 as head of the company’s networks business in India and continued in this role for Nokia Siemens Networks.
Beresford-Wylie announced at the start of the month that he would step down after two years in the role.
Suri, 41, will officially take over as CEO on October 1. Beresford-Wylie will stay until November 1.
Beresford-Wylie’s departure follows that of Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg, who announced in June said he would step down at the end of the year to become chairman of BP. He will be replaced by CFO Hans Vestberg.