A changing of the guard in commercial wireless

With news over the weekend that John Legere is leaving T-Mobile immediately to pursue other, unspecified career “options,” a new generation of leadership in the US wireless industry is now officially taking over.

Meaning, each of the big American wireless network operators – Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile – now has a relatively fresh CEO. And just in time too: Each of these executives is going to have to figure out a way to navigate a shifting wireless landscape while dealing with the combined effects of a pandemic and a seemingly unavoidable economic recession. Oh, and they’ll have to deal with 5G too.

Here’s a brief look at the new faces of leadership in mobile:

Mike Sievert

Although Legere is making an amicable but abrupt exit, he has been grooming Sievert for years to take T-Mobile into its big second act, following the close of T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint. Sievert, for his part, has big shoes to fill: In just a few short years, Legere transformed a lukewarm, fourth-place operator without a 4G network into one with a comparable network and customer base as its two big rivals but that commands twice as much spectrum.

Further, Sievert appears poised to continue Legere’s “uncarrier” momentum, having taken the lead on a number of T-Mobile’s strategic efforts during the past few years, first as the operator’s CMO and more recently as its COO.

Moreover, Sievert is inheriting most of Legere’s top lieutenants, including CFO Braxton Carter and networking chief Neville Ray, giving him firm footing to move into the fixed wireless and TV businesses, at least in the short term.

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