What’s up with… Jio Platforms, Tecnotree, Zayo

• Jio Platforms names new CEO ahead of IPO
• Tecnotree receives more takeover interest
• Verizon Consumer chief appointed Zayo CEO

In today’s industry news roundup: Jio Platforms appoints the head of its telco division as CEO as it prepares for a $4bn IPO; Tecnotree receives a “non-binding indication of interest” to rival its existing $131m takeover bid; Zayo CEO Steve Smith is retiring, with Verizon Consumer boss Sowmyanarayan Sampath set to replace him; and much more!

Jio Platforms has appointed Pankaj Pawar, the boss of its telecom subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm, as its new group CEO ahead of an expected public offering. Pawar replaces Kiran Thomas, who resigned in March, according to information revealed as part of its draft initial public offering (IPO) papers, seen by The Economic Times. Pawar has been associated with the Reliance Group since the year 2000 and was most recently managing director of the telecom division, which includes the Jio mobile network. Jio Platforms – which is the holding company for billionaire Mukesh ‘Ambani’s digital businesses – is aiming to raise around $4bn with the IPO, making it one of India’s largest listings in recent years.

Finnish BSS vendor Tecnotree has received a “non-binding indication of interest” in the acquisition of the company, which already has one takeover offer on the table. In January, a consortium comprising the vendor’s long-time CEO, Padma Ravichander, along with Helios Investment Partners and existing major Tecnotree investor Fitzroy Investments, offered to take the company private with an offer of €5.70 per share, a price that valued the company at €131m. Now, though, the vendor’s board has received a letter from a “large, diversified Canadian technology investment and media company” that is interested in buying Tecnotree and values the company at €7.98 to €9.12 per share which, when the offer was announced to investors late on Monday, represented a premium of 40% to 60%. At the top of that price range, Tecnotree would be valued at almost €210m. News of the additional interest sent Tecnotree’s share price up by 23% to €6.90 on the Helsinki Stock Exchange in trading on Tuesday. The vendor’s board is “evaluating the opportunity”. 

Zayo Group has announced that Verizon consumer chief Sowmyanarayan Sampath will replace Steve Smith as the company’s CEO in September. Sampath has spent more than 12 years at Verizon in roles including CEO of Verizon’s consumer division, and before that was chief revenue officer at Verizon Business, as well as president of global enterprise, and chief product officer. He also led Boston Consulting Group’s global telecom practice for carriers across the world, according to his LinkedIn profile. Smith, who is retiring after five years at the helm of the global wholesale provider, was previously CEO and president at datacentre firm Equinix for more than a decade.

SK Telecom (SKT) has been selected by South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT and National Intelligence Society Agency (NIA) to deploy AI-RAN infrastructure and develop “physical AI convergence services” as part of the country’s Hyper-AI Network Infrastructure Development demo project. SKT aims to “verify ultra-low latency, high-reliability, and ultra-precision network technologies in industrial settings, which serve as the core foundation for the national agenda project, the AI Highway,” the company noted in this announcement (in Korean). “For physical AI, such as robots, to perform perception, judgement and control in real time onsite… requires communication capable of exchanging large volumes of data without delay, as well as supporting infrastructure that can process AI computations beyond the robots’ ability to handle on their own,” noted SKT. The operator will work with four vendors – Ericsson, HFR Networks, Nokia and Samsung – on the project, and noted that it plans to “verify implementation methods suitable for service requirements by diversifying the configuration of AI-RAN computational resources, such as CPUs and GPUs, and quantitatively comparing performance in the same environment.

Orange has created a Unified Cloud Platform team, comprising 700 experts from three divisions – Orange Business, Orange Innovation and Orange Wholesale – who will help the operator to be “more efficient, stronger and offer a new cloud infrastructure, highly sovereign, open source and modular for our customers and our internal needs,” noted Jean Louis Le Roux, head of international networks at Orange, in this LinkedIn post. Michael Trabbia, CEO of Orange Wholesale, noted in his LinkedIn post that the move is part of the telco’s Trust the Future strategy, and that the team will aim to “build a common private cloud technical foundation for the group… This evolution aims to industrialise our cloud capabilities, standardise our environments, accelerate automation and strengthen our agility on key services, such as Infrastructure as a Service, Container as a Service, Platform as a Service and AI as a Service. We capitalise on our internal expertise and our knowledge of open source to continue to gain flexibility, security and strategic autonomy so that our customers benefit from the best service, adapted to their needs and market developments.” The move follows years of effort within Orange to develop its Orange Telco Cloud, which Laurent Leboucher, group CTO and EVP of networks at Orange, discussed with TelecomTV in April this year. 

BT Group has named Uzair Qadeer to replace Alison Wilcox, who is stepping down as chief people and culture officer, bringing an end to her second stint with the British telco at the end of this year. Wilcox returned to BT to oversee its people operations in May 2025 on an interim basis, following various portfolio roles across the NHS, a near-seven-year stint as BT’s HR director and six years in various HR roles at Vodafone. According to a LinkedIn post, Wilcox always knew her return to BT would be “short and sweet”. Her replacement Qadeer is currently group chief people officer at the BBC, a role he has held since 2023. His switch to BT will mark his first foray into telecom.

Sticking with appointments, JT Group has named former BT Wholesale director Clive Goodwin as its next chief commercial officer. Goodwin brings more than two decades of telecom experience to the Channel Island-based telco, following a number of roles in BT’s wholesale arm, before spending a decade at Vodafone, most notably as global head of commercial, operations and procurement – a position he left in October 2023. Goodwin will be tasked with overseeing JT’s commercial strategy and global expansion, as the company integrates Manx Telecom, which it bought earlier this year. It also announced former Vodafone salesman Ben Carter has joined as JT’s new head of enterprise. 

– The staff, TelecomTV