Vodafone announced that its long-serving CTO Steve Pusey is to retire at the end of July this year and will be replaced by the head of Ericsson's networks division, Johan Wibergh.
The UK-based group noted that Pusey joined Vodafone from Nortel in 2006 and has been responsible for defining and leading the group's global technology strategy for the past eight years. In particular, the current CTO is credited with driving the international expansion of Vodafone's 3G services and the launch of LTE (or 4G) services in 15 countries.
More recently, Pusey has led the organic investment programme, Project Spring--set up to exploit the funds raised when Vodafone sold its stake in Verizon Wireless--and has also played a leading role in developing the group's convergence strategy, including the acquisition of fixed-line businesses in Germany, New Zealand, Spain and the UK and the ongoing development of fibre networks in Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
Ericsson's Wibergh will take over such tasks in future, and brings with him a wealth of experience in mobile networks after working at the Sweden-based vendor since 1996.
"[Wibergh's] background and skills are strongly complementary as we continue our transition to a global data company and I look forward to working with him closely," said Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao.
Although Wibergh has stepped down from his position immediately, he will remain available to Ericsson until the end of April. However, as things stand it does not look like he will be replaced: Ericsson said its CEO and president Hans Vestberg will also take on the networks division, which includes the two business units cloud & IP and radio.
"Under Johan's leadership we have consolidated our market leadership in mobile networks and taken important steps to drive company transformation in IP, Cloud and the evolution towards 5G. I am proud to see that he now takes on another senior position in the industry," said Vestberg.
For more:
- see this Vodafone release
- see this Ericsson release
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