Credit: Sasha85ru / Getty Images Deutsche Telekom has appointed the former head of its profitable T-Mobile phone business as the company’s chief executive officer (CEO).Rene Obermann joined the German network operator in 1998, working his way up the ladder to become a board member and head of the group’s mobile phone division, the company said Monday.Obermann succeeds Kai-Uwe Ricke, who resigned Sunday after a meeting with the supervisory board.Ricke was appointed CEO on Nov. 15, 2002, to succeed Ron Sommer, who lost his job after plunging Europe’s largest telecommunications service provider into debt and allowing its stock to free-fall. Sommer spent billions of euros acquiring third-generation mobile phone licenses and expanding the company’s footprint through international acquisitions, such as VoiceStream Wireless in the United States. At the helm of Deutsche Telekom, Ricke successfully reduced the group’s debt from more than 65 billion euros (US$83.5 billion) to less than 40 billion euros at the end of September. But he was unable to stop declining revenue in its traditional landline business, as competitors with lower fixed costs nibbled away at its customer base for voice services.One of Obermann’s immediate challenges will be to dam the flow of customers to rivals. -John Blau, IDG News Service (Dusseldorf Bureau) Related content brandpost The steep cost of a poor data management strategy Without a data management strategy, organizations stall digital progress, often putting their business trajectory at risk. Here’s how to move forward. By Jay Limbasiya, Global AI, Analytics, & Data Management Business Development, Unstructured Data Solutions, Dell Technologies Jun 09, 2023 6 mins Data Management feature How Capital One delivers data governance at scale With hundreds of petabytes of data in operation, the bank has adopted a hybrid model and a ‘sloped governance’ framework to ensure its lines of business get the data they need in real-time. By Thor Olavsrud Jun 09, 2023 6 mins Data Governance Data Management feature Assessing the business risk of AI bias The lengths to which AI can be biased are still being understood. The potential damage is, therefore, a big priority as companies increasingly use various AI tools for decision-making. By Karin Lindstrom Jun 09, 2023 4 mins CIO Artificial Intelligence IT Leadership brandpost Rebalancing through Recalibration: CIOs Operationalizing Pandemic-era Innovation By Kamal Nath, CEO, Sify Technologies Jun 08, 2023 6 mins CIO Digital Transformation Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe