Telenor has selected Petter Furberg, current CFO of majority-owned Thai unit Dtac, to become the first CEO of the new Telenor Myanmar.
Furberg will be tasked with rapidly rolling out a network in the fledgling market, Telenor announced.
The operator was last week revealed to have committed to rolling out an LTE-ready HSPA network with a geographic reach of 83% of Myanmar within five years.
Furberg has been working at Telenor for the last 14 years, holding positions including group head of financial services and Dtac Chief Marketing Officer.
Telenor has also named the rest of the Telenor Myanmar management team – pending government approval.
Dtac Chief People Officer Tipayarat Kaewsringarm will move into the same position at Telenor Myanmar. The former head of Dtac's network division will meanwhile become CTO.
Joining from Telenor Asia, Lars Erik Tellmann will take the role of CFO, Sharad Mehrotra will be Chief Marketing Officer and Gunnar Bertelsen will be Chief Corporate Affairs Officer.
In other major regional telecom career news, the Australian company overseeing the rollout of the government's National Broadband Network, NBN Co, has announced the imminent retirement of founding CEO Mike Quigley.
Announcing his decision to return to retirement after four years, Quigley said he had fulfilled his remit. “My job was to lay the foundations for the NBN for the next 30 years. That job is largely complete,” he said.
But Informa Telecoms and Media senior analyst for operator strategy Tony Brown painted a different picture.
“The only surprise in the announcement... is that Mr. Quigley has managed to last quite so long – over four years – in what is a nearly impossible job,” Brown said in a blog post.
“Not only was Mr. Quigley charged with delivering a 12.2 million premise FTTP network in one of the world’s most challenging countries to do so, but he also had to do it in a poisonous political environment.”
He said the lack of bipartisan support and the associated intense political and media scrutiny of the project, coupled with the “hugely ambitious” FTTP deployment plan, made Quigley's job extremely difficult.
“Accordingly, it will matter little who replaces Mr. Quigley as NBN Co CEO until some of these issues are resolved at a federal governmental level and Labor and the Coalition reach some kind of consensus on the future direction of the network.”
The decision has meanwhile prompted speculation in the Australian media over whether Quigley decided to leave, was pushed out, or a combination of both.