Chief Operating Officer — Mobile And Fixed Network

The mandate

This integrated operator is approaching the most consequential phase of retiring a legacy voice-and-access estate. The remaining customers are not a random sample of the original base. They include households with limited digital confidence, small organisations using old equipment, lifts and alarms, payment terminals, monitored services and sites where replacement connectivity is difficult. The easy migrations have largely occurred; the residual estate demands case-level operational judgement.

The group is creating a Chief Operating Officer role to own the end-to-end retirement outcome across mobile and fixed operations. The COO will be accountable for customer readiness, migration factories, field execution, partner capacity, service assurance, vulnerable-customer safeguards, exception governance and physical closure. Technology leaders own platform design and commercial leaders own propositions, but the COO must ensure that every promised route can be executed safely at scale.

This planned new role is not an instruction to accelerate disconnection regardless of consequence. Delay carries cost, reliability and support risk, yet a date cannot replace evidence that customers and dependent equipment will function. The COO must make residual complexity visible, set a disciplined path for exceptions and bring the executive committee choices before safe options disappear.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in London, the role influences approximately 2,425 employees and material partners across the United Kingdom and a wider international operating region. The perimeter includes migration operations, customer readiness, contact centres, field service, installation, service assurance, partner management, logistics and closure coordination. Interfaces extend to fixed and mobile engineering, product, retail and business channels, data, regulatory affairs, legal, security and public-policy teams.

Customer dependencies are often poorly documented. A line described as ordinary voice may support an alarm, telecare device, entry system or intermittent business process. Some replacement services depend on local power or mobile coverage that the old service did not require. The operation must discover enough information to act responsibly without collecting unnecessary sensitive data or claiming expertise it does not possess.

Geography and partner structure add variation. Building access, rural coverage, equipment availability and technician skills affect the migration route. Third parties may own the dependent device or customer relationship. The COO needs a national control system that supports local judgement and prevents unresolved cases from being passed between organisations.

First-year agenda

The first hundred days will establish a residual-base truth. The COO will reconcile service, customer, vulnerability, equipment, previous-contact, appointment, network and exception records. A sample of completed and failed migrations will be reconstructed to identify where central status diverges from household or site reality. Data confidence will be shown alongside volume so uncertainty cannot be mistaken for readiness.

Customers will be segmented by migration pathway and consequence. Standard cases should flow through a simple digital or assisted process. Complex households and small organisations will receive skilled support. Services involving alarms, telecare, lifts or other dependent equipment will require coordination with the appropriate provider and evidence of successful operation. Locations without a currently safe alternative will enter a controlled exception route rather than an ordinary backlog.

The COO will define completion evidence for each pathway. An order, equipment dispatch or engineer visit will not by itself count as a successful migration. Evidence may include service activation, voice or data test, dependent-device confirmation, customer understanding, billing integrity and a stabilisation window. Failed or incomplete cases will retain named ownership until a safe state is confirmed.

Field and contact operations will be redesigned around residual complexity. Appointment duration, skills, equipment and escalation access must reflect the customer cohort. Technicians and advisers will have authority to stop when circumstances differ from the plan. Partner contracts will reward stable completion, accurate evidence and considerate treatment rather than raw volume alone.

A national exception office will govern cases that cannot follow a standard path. Every exception will state the dependency, evidence, interim protection, owner, review date and options. Patterns will feed product, coverage and policy decisions. The office must not become a warehouse for cases that functional teams find inconvenient; repeated causes require an enterprise intervention.

Incident and recovery plans will be tested for the transition period. Scenarios will combine storms, power loss, mobile congestion, vendor failure and large numbers of customers using replacement voice simultaneously. Particular attention will go to emergency calling, vulnerable users, public communications, equipment distribution and cross-operator dependencies. Findings must change capacity, procedures or closure sequence.

Physical platform retirement will be linked to customer evidence. Engineering shutdown gates will require reconciliation of active services, unresolved exceptions, regulatory obligations, recovery readiness and communication. Once a component is closed, decommissioning, data, spares, property and environmental obligations will have clear ownership. The COO will prevent local reactivation from becoming the hidden fallback plan.

By year-end, the remaining estate should be smaller and better understood, with higher stable-completion rates, fewer repeatedly failed cases and credible closure plans for selected network elements. The organisation should be able to explain not only how many services moved, but why the residual cases remain and what decision each requires.

Leadership responsibilities

The COO will run the integrated retirement command and provide the group sponsor with one operational account across customers, field work, partners and network closure. They will require functions to resolve conflicts at source and will escalate decisions involving service withdrawal, customer harm or material capital. Public targets will never be interpreted more broadly than the evidence supports.

They will build a leadership culture that values accurate status and respectful customer treatment. Frontline employees must be able to surface a dependency without being penalised for slowing throughput. Conversely, recurring avoidance, poor record keeping or passing responsibility will be challenged directly.

The COO will engage personally with regulators, emergency and public bodies, major partners and representative customer groups where operational evidence is required. Communication must acknowledge uncertainty and describe safeguards without exposing individual customer information.

Measures of success

The board will track residual services, attempted and stable migrations, repeat appointments, failed completion, dependent-device outcomes, unresolved high-consequence exceptions and closure readiness. Customer measures include complaints, vulnerability handling, early-life faults, emergency-service issues and billing errors.

Operational measures cover field productivity adjusted for complexity, partner quality, equipment availability, contact resolution, evidence completeness and incident recovery. Financial measures include run-cost reduction, migration cost, avoided repeat work and closure benefits realised. Volume alone will never outweigh safe customer outcome.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring more than 28 years in telecommunications, utilities, transport or another essential-service operation with large-scale customer and field complexity. They must have led a legacy retirement, compulsory migration or network transition involving vulnerable users and dependent equipment. Direct responsibility for service incidents is essential.

The board will examine examples of refusing an unsafe completion, redesigning partner incentives, governing a stubborn exception population and closing physical infrastructure only after operational evidence was reconciled. Candidates should understand fixed and mobile service, field operations, customer care, logistics, resilience and regulated obligations.

The successful COO will be humane and exacting. They must respect frontline judgement, challenge misleading aggregates and make time-bound decisions in situations where no option is perfect. Credibility with engineers, customer advocates, regulators and boards is required.

Compensation and appointment terms

Base compensation is expected to fall between GBP 350,000 and GBP 520,000, accompanied by annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will balance safe migration, stable service, responsible closure, economic delivery and leadership quality. Final terms will reflect comparable operational scale, regulated-service experience and verified forfeited awards.

Confidentiality

The operator remains unnamed because retirement schedules, residual customer locations, vulnerabilities and network dependencies are sensitive. Operational detail will be released to verified candidates after conflicts are resolved and confidentiality undertakings are complete. Applicants must not submit customer records, network maps, incident files or dependent-device data from prior organisations.