Sprint late on Monday made no fewer than three new c-level appointments as the U.S. telco seeks to pick up the pace of its turnaround plan.
Tarek Robbiati, who in the past has served as deputy CFO of Telstra, has joined Sprint from Australian finance company FlexiGroup to become the operator’s new chief financial officer.
Sprint’s current CFO, Joseph Euteneuer, will leave the company.
Telekom Austria’s chief technology officer Günther Ottendorfer will take on a newly-created role at Sprint: chief operating officer, technology. He will take on responsibility for network planning and deployment, reporting to Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure.
Junichi Miyakawa, who currently serves as Sprint’s technical chief operating officer, will become a senior technical advisor in the CEO’s office and a network strategy liaison between Sprint and its Japanese parent Softbank.
Finally, John Saw, who until now has served as chief network officer, has been promoted to chief technology officer, reporting to Ottendorfer.
"One of my goals when I first arrived as CEO was to strengthen our management team," said Claure, in a statement. "As I begin my second year here at Sprint, I feel very good about the team we have put together to pursue the great opportunities ahead. I couldn’t be more excited to add talented and experienced executives like Tarek and Günther to our leadership team."
The new appointments are clearly intended to spur on Sprint’s network transformation. The company is in the midst of augmenting its 800-MHz and 1900-MHz spectrum with the unpaired 2.5-GHz spectrum it acquired when Sprint bought Clearwire.
In addition to senior roles at Telstra and FlexiGroup, Tarek Robbiati has also served as CEO of Telstra’s former Hong Kong mobile subsidiary CSL, where he oversaw the overhaul of the company’s mobile network.
At Telekom Austria, Günther Ottendorfer oversaw the company’s ongoing migration to all-IP networks and led tests and trials of network functions virtualisation (NFV) and G.fast. Before that, Ottendorfer was managing director, networks, at Singtel’s Australian arm Optus, and he also spent nine years at Deutsche Telekom, where he eventually took responsibility for the German incumbent’s mobile network planning across Europe.
"Both of these individuals are world-class leaders with deep expertise and proven track records in exactly the areas that will be critical to accelerating our efforts to move Sprint forward," Claure said.
