In today’s industry news line-up: Orange deputy CEO Ramon Fernandez has called time on the operator and is switching industries; Japanese telco quartet join forces for new Open RAN test facility; Meta’s not backing down on its metaverse investments; and much more!
Orange deputy CEO, Ramon Fernandez, who has responsibility for the operator’s finance, performance and development functions, has jumped ship to join transportation group CMA CGM, where he will be CFO. Orange announced his impending departure (he will leave during the first quarter of next year after the operator’s full-year 2022 results have been published) just as his appointment was announced by CMA CGM. He has overseen the telco’s financials for the past eight years, before which he was director of the French Treasury for more than five years. Fernandez will continue to work with, and present the 2022 financials with, Orange CEO Christel Heydemann, who said he has “played an essential role in the development of the company over recent years, in particular through his work on efficiency and value creation”. But with Heydemann being appointed from outside the company to take over from Stéphane Richard as CEO earlier this year, it suggested Fernandez had gone as far as he could at the operator, and it seems he is now switching industries for the next chapter in his career.
Japanese mobile network operators NTT Docomo, KDDI, SoftBank and Rakuten Mobile have collaborated on the formation of a new testing and certification facility, dubbed “Japan OTIC [open testing and integration centre]”, which will focus on Open RAN network elements that conform to O-RAN Alliance specifications. The centre is backed by the YRP Research and Development Promotion Association (which promotes R&D ICT projects) and will serve as “a neutral and open interoperability verification environment”. It will aim to “open, revitalise, diversify and expand overseas” Japan’s IT and telecom technology…
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