Canadian national Nikos Katinakis may be virtually unknown in Australia, but his appointment at Telstra’s networks division comes after several years at the coalface of arguably the fastest operator deployment in history.

Katinakis was the networks EVP at Reliance Jio in India which, in less than two years, has signed 215 million subscribers (that is not a typo). It gained its first 50 million subscribers in a mere 80 days and added around 100 million more in the last 12 months.

Jio launched LTE service across India in the 850MHz, 1800MHz and 2600MHz bands with an aggressive pricing offer: free and unlimited voice calls across the country. Its flagship plan is priced at just under $4 per month.

Its success as a challenger is said to be the inspiration behind TPG’s proposed 4th network rollout in Australia.

Katinakis was with Jio from launch but left in mysterious circumstances a few weeks ago with Indian financial press reporting a departure of several expatriate executives from the company. There was speculation that this may have been due to cultural difficulties with the family-run nature of the Reliance business, as well as a change in the focus of the business to expand into fixed broadband.

He was hired from Canadian telco Rogers Communications where he held senior technology roles for five years. Rogers took him in-house from Ericsson Canada where he held a key technology and account role. In fact, during his time at Ericsson in the late 1990s, Katinakis was granted seven separate patents for cellular network technologies including a technique for emergency call handling, duplex communications between base stations and a simultaneous voice and data delivery protocol.

One of the fascinating aspects to his hire is not only his Ericsson ties but the fact that Reliance Jio is one of a few international customers for Samsung network equipment. Although Telstra is an Ericsson shop, CommsDay has previously reported that Huawei and ZTE had been shortlisted as potential bidders for its 5G network.

But with the prospect that both those companies may be prevented from supplying Australian 5G, this could remove the competitive tension from the tender. Katinakis’ deep familiarity and apparent comfort with Samsung as a supplier is a useful relationship to bring to Australia.

(This appeared in CommsDay 31 July)