9mobile has announced a new Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Deputy Chief Technical Officer and Director of Strategy within its senior management team.
Juergen Peschel has been appointed as the New CTO, Baqi Salihu, Deputy CTO, and Karn Gulati as Director of Strategy.
As CTO, Peschel, an experienced professional with an international executive track record within the IT, Managed Services & Telecommunications Industry, including expertise in a wide variety of industry verticals and markets, will oversee the evolution and integration of the company’s technical functions.
Peschel has over 25 years of extensive international and operational experience as a technology and business leader. Over the years, he has led Information Technology teams, built VAS Services, IP, and transport networks for Vodafone across all European markets, and engaged with emerging markets across the world for subsea, carrier, and satellite services. He successfully launched the mobile payment service Mpesa in Kenya.
As Deputy CTO, Salihu will support the CTO to drive technology decisions in line with current trends and align the technical and transformation initiatives of 9mobile.
He is a seasoned professional with over 18 years of Mobile Telecoms Engineering, Operations, RF Planning & Optimization and Digital Services experience. He led the Network QOS and Support Department of 9mobile as the Director Network Quality of Service since June 2018.
Salihu executed the LTE re-farm solution using 1800MHz spectrum, achieving wider mobile broadband coverage, slashing the number of sites, and reducing carbon emissions while ensuring high-quality data service. This project significantly reduced TCO, enhanced users’ mobile broadband quality of experience, increased brand value for 9mobile while saving about $152 million in spectrum fees. He joined 9mobile in December 2008.