• Enrique Blanco was formerly group CTIO at Telefónica
• He ‘retired’ in March 2025
• Now he’s back in the telecom saddle with an advisory role at Rakuten Symphony

Enrique Blanco, who stepped down as the group chief technology and information officer (CTIO) of Telefónica in March 2025 as he embraced semi-retirement, has dusted off his working jacket and joined Rakuten Symphony as a strategic advisor to the vendor’s management team. 

The appointment is a coup for the vendor, which is the sister company and global technology promoter of Japanese telco Rakuten Mobile, as Blanco is one of the most respected figures in the industry with decades of experience in telecom network deployment, innovation and transformation and, like Rakuten Symphony, has long been a fan of open, disaggregated network architectures. He looked back on his career and shared his thoughts about the future of the industry in an exclusive video interview with TelecomTV in March 2025. 

And now he’s back! According to the vendor, Blanco is joining the company “at a time when operators are accelerating investments in network infrastructure and intelligence amidst increasing pressure to improve returns and deliver better customer experiences. Those challenges are driving interest in software-based networks, automation and more open technology ecosystems that enable improved agility while reducing operational complexity.” 

Well, there’s no doubt that telcos are pivoting their investment strategies towards AI-enabled automation and telco cloud platforms, but whether they are “accelerating” their investments is debatable, as many telco capex budgets are shrinking. 

All the more reason, then, to have the best brains in the business on board in order to capture a bigger slice of the telco capex pie. 

In a prepared statement about his appointment, Blanco noted: “The industry has made significant progress over the past decade as we’ve advanced to 5G and beyond, but operators still face many of the same challenges around complexity, cost and speed of innovation. What drew me to Rakuten Symphony is its willingness to rethink architecture and how networks are built and operated. Open architectures, automation and cloud-native technologies give operators more flexibility to adapt their businesses and respond to changing customer expectations. I’m looking forward to helping shape that next stage of the industry’s evolution.”

(For more on Rakuten and cloud native, see our latest free-to-download DSP Leaders report, Cloud-Native Telco Strategies.)

“Enrique has spent his career shaping the evolution of modern telecommunications,” said Sharad Sriwastawa, president of Rakuten Symphony. “His insights and expertise will accelerate our work with like-minded service providers that want to build better networks for the future of connectivity. His experience will enable us to provide even greater support to operators as they move beyond network modernisation and embrace AI-driven business transformation.”

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV