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John ledger the firebrand CEO of T Mobile is bidding adieu, the company announced that he would step down next May, with Chief Operating Officer and President Mike Seaver taking the reins of the company.
This is a big move considering so much of T mobile's and carrier identity is linked to legends brash and rebellious nature.
Eli, what do you think?
So as you mentioned, it's a big move.
It's obviously coming at a very interesting time for Tmobile in the wireless industry.
Yes.
We have 5G which TMobile plans to take nationwide and cover 200 million people, on December sixth.
They announced that the other week.
They have obviously the sprint merger.
Yes.
Which we've been covering.
Still at this point is kind of in limbo.
We'll see.
Yeah, so it's a very interesting time to make the announcement that.
The CEO who's been aligned so with the company is going to leave not long after this deal is, in their opinion hopefully gonna close.
No, I think it's clear that this company needed to address it.
They were getting questions about this back at the encare ventures two weeks back.
In addition, there was all this chatter about John legend going to we work with he's officially denied right.
Yes I'm a call today with with analysts and reporters he flat out said he's not going to we work.
Contrary to reports that circulated over the last week that said he was in the running and was talking to SoftBank who has a significant stake and we work about taking over SoftBank is the company that also owns sprint.
Who's obviously been working with very closely to try to get this deal across the finish line.
He's not going there.
Right now.
So take us through some of the changes.
Obviously Mike Seaver who's been around for a while, he's been around throughout this entire career run over the last several years is taking over as CEO but there were some other personal changes.
Yeah.
So Mike Seaver is being bumped up from COO to CEO.
Now with this movie, he's already president.
He's gonna remain president.
Ledger's remaining on the board he's not going anywhere Braxton Carter, one of Ledger's lieutenants is going also stay around at least until I believe July is when they said-
And he's the chief financial officer right now.
Yep.
And he's he's hanging around, at least I believe until July is what they said.
Neville Ray who's been the CTO is now bumped up to President of technology.
What exactly that means.
Yeah, I'm not sure what that means.
Is it necessarily clear?
Maybe he just gets more money, I'm assuming he's doing the same thing.
It could be.
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And Neville, by the way, for additional context, he's the one that really kind of pushed out the super fast roll out of their 4G network and he's doing that now with the 5G network.
He's the network guru.
Yeah, yeah.
He's the guy who's completely redone, obviously in conjunction with other Talented members of their team.
Right.
Please completely redone their network and really done a very impressive job.
Right.
Building it up from the reputation that they had years ago to a much stronger, more viable network business today.
And so the big question here, going back to legends kind of brash nature, Mike Siebert, who I've dealt with for a long time we both dealt with for a while.
He's definitely not John Legere.
He's a bit more buttoned up.
He's a bit more straight laced, very smart guy.
But whenever you're going from a company that's run from a colorful character like Legere to someone who's a bit more straight laced like Mike, what do you think?
Is that going to have a fundamental change in the company the way it's run?
I can't imagine it won't.
Both are well known industry.
Veterans.
Right.
Seaver It was also an AT&T just like ledger was.
Yep.
I believe there's also a Clearwire.
Microsoft as while.
Yep.
Definitely different personalities between ledger and Seaver.
But, they're talking about T Mobile, keeping this, whatever is been working not breaking.
Right.
So I can't imagine they're going to get rid of all their things like T Mobile Tuesday's are, you know, taking shots at the competition that's very much a part of the brand at that point.
Right, right.
It just made up the ledger doing, you know, firing those guns.
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