UPDATE: The tournament is now over. Click here for the results.
As our weeklong tournament comes to a close, it’s going to be T-Mobile’s John Legere versus OneWeb’s Greg Wyler in the final vote for most powerful executive in the U.S. telecom industry for 2017. Voting in this final round will remain open through the weekend, and we’ll announce the winner first thing Monday morning.
So which executive will you vote for? There are strong arguments for each:
John Legere won last year’s vote, and the arguments to vote for him this year remain largely the same, if even more pronounced. Since joining the company in 2012, Legere has managed to rekindle T-Mobile’s momentum in the wireless industry with a series of innovative new service offerings, promotions and pricing models. During 2017 specifically, Legere played a part in the failed merger negotiations between Sprint and T-Mobile, but perhaps more importantly he has so far successfully fended off increased competition from heavyweights Verizon and AT&T, which both officially joined the unlimited data game earlier this year.
The argument for Greg Wyler is a little more nuanced. Wyler was voted FierceWireless’ top rising star this year, based on his ambitious plan to offer internet services to up to 1 billion subscribers worldwide via roughly 600 low-Earth satellites beaming download speeds of up to 200 Mbps, upload speeds of up to 50 Mbps, and lower latency than existing services. Undergirding his efforts, OneWeb has raised almost $2 billion in funding from the likes of Qualcomm, Bharti, Coca-Cola, Hughes, Virgin Group—and from Japan’s SoftBank, which Wyler himself noted created a particularly interesting dynamic earlier this week as he faced off against SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son in this very “powerful people” tournament. Nonetheless, Wyler has proven a major force in the industry, and his plans could have far-reaching ramifications.
As in previous rounds, we’re using Polldaddy.com for the actual voting, and repeated voting is prohibited with a block to cookies and IP addresses. The tournament bracket is below, and below that is the actual matchup you can vote on.
To see the results from the previous rounds this week, click here, here, here and here. I hope you’ve enjoyed this tournament, and don’t hesitate to let me know what you think. — Mike | @mikeddano
