Telstra Country Wide boss, Doug Campbell to retire

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 07 December 2005 09:41

IT Industry - Strategy

Long serving Telstra executive, Doug Campbell, is to retire later this month from his position as group managing director, Telstra Country Wide.

He is one of Telstra's most experienced senior executives, with over 48 years experience in the industry, and 17 with Telstra. He will continue his association with the company as an executive advisor to the CEO and as a member of the Telstra Country Wide Advisory board. Announcing Campbell's resignation, in an email to staff, CEO Sol Trujillo, saidhis advisory role would include, but not be limited to, "special responsibility for developing our business in rural Australia, representing Telstra's interests to rural constituencies, and assisting us as rural customers upgrade their mobile phone services from CDMA to 3G." Trujillo said that Campbell's resignation "does not signal any major changes to the...Telstra Country Wide model the company has adopted in 2000...In the coming weeks I will outline plans for the leadership of the business unit." During his time with Telstra, and its predecessor Telecom Australia, Campbell has served in multiple senior positions, including group managing director for the company's wholesale, international, carrier services, network and technology, and consumer and commercial business units. According to Trujillo, "Doug is perhaps best known...for his leadership of Telstra Country Wide since 2000. Doug not only built a commercially successful business serving our valued customers in rural and regional Australia, but he also built durable and long-standing alliances with regional communities and organisations across Australia." Campbell, a Canadian, joined Telecom Australia in 1989 in the newly created position of deputy managing director. He had migrated to Australia a year earlier - a move he made to fulfil a promise made to his Australian-born wife when they married 23 years earlier - and had taken up the position of general manager of business operations with AWA Ltd. Campbell spent the last eight years of his career in Canada as president of Canadian National Communications (CNC), then a subsidiary of Canadian National a government business enterprise mostly providing rail transport, but also operating in other areas including telecommunications. His comments on joining Telecom Australia sound remarkably similar to claims made by the new management at the recent announcement of Telstra's strategic direction. Back in 1989, Campbell said: "I can see a lot of ways to apply my [Canadian] experience to make Telecom more market driven and more customer oriented."