Deutsche Telekom refreshed its top team with appointments and departures across finance and technology and ushered in its “next generation” of management.
The German telco and T-Mobile parent announced that Jan Hofmeyr, currently VP of Amazon Web Services (AWS) for telecom, has been appointed board member for product and technology and will start on November 1.
As DT’s new technology chief, Hofmeyr will fill the void that opened in April when his predecessor Abdu Mudesir abruptly left the company to take the top tech job at Verizon. Mudesir will start at the US carrier at the end of March next year, when Joe Russo, president of global networks and technology, retires.
Hofmeyr’s appointment will no doubt be a relief to DT’s long-serving CFO Christian Illek, who has been looking after the group’s product and technology realm since Mudesir left.
However, Illek’s respite from double duty will be short-lived because another major management change announced Tuesday is that the 62-year-old exec is retiring. He is leaving the company “for age-related reasons” at the end of April 2027, after the company’s next annual general meeting, according to Deutsche Telekom.
Illek’s replacement will be Dhananjay Mirchandani, currently DT’s senior VP for group controlling, who will take over as CFO on May 1, 2027. Mirchandani joined DT in 2019 and has since held various senior financial positions.
Goodbye to ‘a reliable partner’
For DT CEO Timotheus Höttges, saying “farewell” to Illek is “much more than a personnel matter” since the executives have worked closely together for more than 20 years.
“Christian was an important architect of our development in decisive phases,” Höttges said in a statement. “Above all, however, he was always one thing for me: a reliable partner. Someone with whom you could discuss difficult situations openly, who took responsibility and on whom you could rely at all times.”
Jonathan Abrahamson, chief product and digital officer, is also leaving the company “at his own request,” but no further explanation was provided. He will be replaced by Mladen Mitic as of October 1, who is currently senior VP for B2C commercial growth at DT’s Europe business unit.
Höttges, who is DT’s longest-serving CEO with more than 12 years at the helm, noted the time was right for the management changes. “You can also recognize a strong company by the fact that it puts its next generation in charge in good time. That’s exactly what we’re doing now,” he said.
Hofmeyr bridges cloud, AI and telco worlds
Hofmeyr brings to the German telco more than 30 years of telecom and cloud experience that spans AWS, Comcast and Microsoft.
During his five years at AWS, telcos have been his customers. He has worked on product and technology for edge services, including AWS Outposts, and later expanded his role to include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) networking services. Hofmeyr’s most recent position is leading the cloud provider’s telco industry business.
Before joining AWS in September 2021, he worked at Comcast for 15 years in various technology and product delivery roles and served as chief network officer for his last four years at the company. In this position, he led the operator’s core network and communications platforms, reliability engineering, and cloud services organization.
Hofmeyr also led the team that developed Comcast’s X1 cloud-based video platform.
Prior to Comcast, he was director of TV strategy at Microsoft.
“Jan knows the telecommunications industry. … At the same time, he knows the world of international technology platforms, the speed of cloud and digital business models, and the enormous momentum that has created artificial intelligence,” said Höttges. “He knows both sides of the playing field. This is exactly the connection we need now.”
