This week represents the end of an era at T-Mobile, as long-time CTO and technology head Neville Ray announced his retirement.
Ray is a fan of Swindon Town FC, which currently sits in the bottom half of EFL League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system — just above the amateur sides playing football in car parks and school playgrounds — and signifying that he is significantly better at picking wireless technologies than football teams.
Ray has been with T-Mobile since before it even was T-Mobile. He joined then Voicestream in April 2000 and has had a hand in steering T-Mobile from a lowly 3G minnow into a 4G contender and now a 5G world leader.
He will be replaced as president of technology by former Ericsson CTO Ulf Ewaldsson (no word on his soccer affiliations).
Ewaldsson, who likely sold T-Mobile much of its 4G infrastructure, joined T-Mobile in 2019 and was promoted to executive vice president and chief network officer in 2021, a role which involved wearing a snappy T-Mobile Star Trek-style jacket.
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said in a statement that Ewaldsson led the integration of the Sprint and T-Mobile networks after that merger was approved.
“Ulf and team have led the historic merger integration, unlocking billions of dollars in synergies ahead of schedule, while simultaneously improving network satisfaction among customers and reducing churn to record lows,” Sievert said.
T-Mobile is already recognized as a 5G standalone (SA) leader. The operator launched the first-ever 5G SA low-band network in August 2020, and followed that up by switching on an SA network that used Sprint’s 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum in November 2022.
Swede smell of success
So, now the brains behind Ericsson’s early 5G efforts is running the technology show at one of the world’s premier 5G SA providers. Ewaldsson's move also reinforces the Swedish take-over of the U.S. mobile scene, considering that former Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg is now CEO at T-Mobile rival, Verizon (hope you like Lutfisk).
The departures of both the techno-Swedes from Ericsson hasn’t dented the company’s 5G aspirations. Half of the world’s 5G traffic “outside of China” is carried by Ericsson products, Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm told Silverlinings at its media day in London last week.
What else can we tell you about the exec moves at T-Mobile? Nothing, really.
The service provider has a policy of refusing to talk to lowly tech journalists, meaning we were unable to get it to confirm or deny the rumor that it has secretly been run by a cabal of alien space marmosets for the last decade.