Swiss mobile operator Salt Mobile appointed Andreas Schönenberger as its new CEO with effect from Mar. 15, 2016, replacing Johan Andsjö who stepped down in December last year.
Schönenberger has a strong track record in top management functions, with previous roles including general manager of Google Switzerland. He is currently board member of mobilezone -- a role he will leave by Mar. 15 -- and is also president of Swiss mobile association Smama.
The appointment of a new CEO is one of a number of major changes to have taken place at the mobile operator in the past year. The company was previously known as Orange Switzerland, but rebranded as Salt in April 2015 following its acquisition in February 2015 by NJJ Capital, a private holding company owned by French entrepreneur Xavier Niel.
Niel said NJJ has been working on "re-engineering" Salt from the ground up since it made the acquisition.
"I am convinced that by appointing Andreas [Schönenberger] as CEO of Salt we have a strong management team to execute our strategy of profitable growth and innovation in Switzerland," Niel added.
Salt competes with Sunrise Communications and dominant player Swisscom and has said it was aiming to become Switzerland's leading mobile phone provider. Previous efforts to merge Orange Switzerland with Sunrise failed in 2010 due to regulatory resistance.
The company last published its results publically for the first quarter of 2015, when it said it had more than 2.1 million mobile subscribers and revenue of CHF319.3 million (€291 million/$315 million). It also said its 4G network covered 92 per cent of the Swiss population by the end of March 2015 and was targeting 96 per cent coverage by the end of 2015.
On its web site, the company said it has currently achieved 94 per cent 4G coverage with speeds of up to 150 Mbps. It added that it is also working on the rollout of LTE Advanced services that would increase peak data speeds to 300 Mbps.
For more:
- see this Salt release (PDF file)
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