{"id":579426,"date":"2010-05-26T09:45:20","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T13:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=122412"},"modified":"2010-05-26T09:45:20","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T13:45:20","slug":"t-mobile-usa-gets-new-ceo-here%e2%80%99s-what-he-needs-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/579426","title":{"rendered":"T-Mobile USA Gets New CEO: Here\u2019s What He Needs to Do"},"content":{"rendered":"

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T-Mobile USA President and CEO Robert Dotson will leave the nation’s fourth-largest carrier as of May 2011 and will be replaced by Philipp Humm, who was the former CEO of T-Mobile Deutschland. Dotson has been at the helm of T-Mobile USA, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom, for the last 15 years. However, as the mobile market shifts to higher-powered devices that consume a lot of data, T-Mobile has faltered with late network upgrades and a recent quarter that showed off weakness<\/a> in its once-strong prepaid offering.<\/p>\n

Humm will take over as CEO of T-Mobile USA in February 2011, while Dotson will remain on as a non-executive board member until May of that year. But as the mobile market in the U.S. deals with the fact that most Americans already own a cell phone and that growth now has to come from machine-to-machine services and stealing customers away from the competition, things could get rough. As the new head of the smallest player in the space, here are a few things Humm will need to keep an eye on:<\/p>\n

Transition to LTE<\/strong>: T-Mobile may say its rollout of HSPA+ technology across its network will offer “4G speeds,”<\/a> and for the next two years or so it might, but T-Mobile can’t rest on smartphones during that time without preparing for the delivery of data. LTE is a key component of such delivery, as it not only has the potential for faster speeds but is a more efficient user of spectrum, which means it will boost T-Mobile’s capacity.<\/p>\n