- Verizon may be getting a new chief technology officer who's a leader in open RAN
- Santiago Tenorio has left his jobs at both Vodafone and TIP and is rumored to be heading to Verizon
- The shuffling could indicate that Verizon's found an interest in open RAN
Santiago Tenorio, the well-known executive who led Vodafone’s network architecture and was chairman of the board for the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) has left both those positions and is rumored to have become the new chief technology officer for Verizon.
Telecom TV is reporting that Tenorio is joining Verizon, but neither Tenorio nor Verizon have confirmed the rumor, as of yet. Currently Ed Chan is still listed as Verizon’s CTO.
If Tenorio does join Verizon it could indicate that the company is becoming much more interested in open radio access networks (open RAN), an area where it hasn’t played much. Tenorio is a well-liked executive who has made a name for himself as a champion of open RAN.
Leonard Lee, executive analyst with neXt Curve, said, “No doubt that Tenorio will bring some open RAN bias and leadership with him. That could be very beneficial to Verizon if they intend on pressing harder on the open RAN accelerator.”
Tenorio has blended his work with both Vodafone and TIP for several years, leading the charge on open RAN at both organizations. In 2020 he made a presentation at a TIP conference about Vodafone’s requests for quotes for open RAN radio hardware.
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And at TIP’s Fyuz event last year, Tenorio talked about silicon in relation to open RAN. He said Vodafone was fast-tracking the development of new open RAN platforms, using Arm-based architectures.
Organizational changes at TIP
In conjunction with the rumor that Tenorio is heading to Verizon, there was also news that he’s leaving his position as chairman at TIP, a role he’s held for nearly five years.
In a LinkedIn posting Eugina Jordan, the chief marketing officer of TIP, wrote, “Yago, for nearly five years, your leadership has been nothing short of transformational. Not only did you steer TIP through some of its most innovative years, but you also brought a visionary’s mindset to everything you touched.”
In his place, TIP has elected AT&T’s VP of Radio Access Network Technology Robert Soni as TIP’s new chairman of the board. This appointment seems fitting as AT&T has taken a much bigger role in open RAN ever since December 2023 when it announced that it was using Ericsson as its open RAN vendor.
In addition, TIP named Intel’s VP of Network and Edge Caroline Chan as the organization’s new president.