Telekom Austria ceo is off to Vimpelcom
Boris Nemsic, the chief executice officer of Telekom Austria has handed in his cards to his management board, and is heading east to head up Russian operator Vimpelcom.
Alexander Izosimov, current CEO and General Director of VimpelCom, will step down on April 2, 2009. Izosimov recently started a stint as chairman of the GSMA. Nemsic will take the CEO job, while Alexander Torbakov, currently leading Russia's largest insurance company, will become the General Director.
With its brand Beeline, VimpelCom had 57.7 million mobile customers as of Q3 2008 and operates in seven countries, covering a total population of 340 million. VimpelCom had revenues of USD 7.5 billion and an EBITDA of 3.7 billion for the first nine months of 2008. The company offers mobile, fixed and broadband Internet.
A Telekom Austria statement said:
"We have accepted the resignation of Boris Nemsic with regret. Under his leadership, Telekom Austria Group defended and secured its leading position in Austria despite fierce competition and set an international footprint with successful operations in seven more countries. The supervisory board will convene in due course to designate a successor as soon as possible,” states Peter Michaelis, Head of the supervisory board of Telekom Austria Group.
“Although I am excited about my new role, I am sad to leave this great company which has been a central part of my life since 1997. Special thanks to all the employees and colleagues, many of which have become my friends, as together we have built the success story of the Telekom Austria Group,” continues Nemsic.
Below is one of the last interviews Nemsic carried out as CEO of Telekom Austria, taking place last Thursday morning with Mobile Europe.
Don't cut us out of the action, device manufacturers warned
Boris Nemsic, ceo of mobilkom austria, has said that the operator expects next year's revenues to be flat, with an increased take-up of mobile broadband balancing out competitive price pressures.
"Speaking about growth is a stretch in the current economic climate," Nemsic said, "Staying stable – this is a good achievement. For us it will be a year of achieving operational excellence, which means keeping a tight control on cost and performance"
One issue for Telekom Austria, mobilkom's parent, is that mobilkom's mobile broadband sales are denting its fixed broadband business, Nemsic said.
"Mobile broadband has slowed down the growth of fixed broadband, but we don't look to distinguish, it's all one connectivity to us. Wherever you are we connect you in an unlimited way."
Nemsic said he expected volumes of mobile broadband contracts to grow, and voice minutes to grow too, although these would not be translated into overall growth on a group basis.
He said he is happy with the company's brand position, with the Bob brand attracting a newer customer, and A1 as the premium brand. mobilkom's customer base grew by 13.6% to 4.5 million subscribers at the end of December 2008. This development was primarily driven by the increase of the contract subscriber base, with attractive tariff models and the no-frills brand bob contributing to this growth, Nemsic said.
The thoughts of Chairman Boris:
Don't bypass the operator on services because we buy the handsets – not the customer:
"We are not in the music business, our role is to bring it to the customer with good quality and speed, and we should get a fee for that. Nokia with Ovi makes sense, but the point is we don't want to be bypassed. That's why everyone on that side of things needs to take care of their partnerships, because we are the buyer of Nokia phones, not the end customer."
We'll do LTE when we're good and ready, but only when the spectrum and price is right:
"I didn't get the impression all the talk was of LTE at Mobile World Congress. Certainly there was no hype. Vendors were saying this and that but we don't see it being commercial before 2011-2015, depending on the market. The digital dividend will be critical – we need 25MHz per operator of spectrum in the 700-800MHz band and it needs to be harmonized across Europe. If we have to do LTE at 2.4GHz or 3.5GHz then it will be seven times more expensive. This is the crucial point. For the vendors, we expect LTE to be more efficient, in terms of cost per bit, cost per customer."
I don't like TV myself but plenty of others do:
"TV uptake is slow because of the number of handsets is small. Speaking personally I am not a big fan of TV, but I know in general terms TV is a medium that's strong in society, and having TV is a good thing in our product portfolio. The biggest potential for TV I can see is in on-demand TV, allowing people to timeshift and watch programmes when they want to watch them. This fits mobile very well."
Capex levels will depend on an individual operator's cash position, but we need to invest in backhaul
"We have to Ethernet-ise our backhaul to meet the broadband data demands. But in our international markets, we need to focus on efficiency and operational excellence this year."