New T-Mobile CEO Legere Faces Promising Problems

Three months after T-Mobile USA’s Chief Executive Officer Philipp Humm quit to move to Vodafone (VOD:LN), the U.S. carrier finds itself welcoming a new chief. Deutsche Telekom (DTE:GR) has named former Global Crossing CEO John Legere to take over its U.S. mobile arm.

Legere, 54, will officially change offices on Sept. 22, when interim CEO Jim Alling will return to his old job as T-Mobile’s chief operating officer. From his résumé, Legere seems an odd choice. Global Crossing, which was acquired by Level 3 Communications last year, was a submarine cable operator providing the fiber connections that link continents, not a consumer-facing wireless business. Legere had a stint at Dell Computer, but the last time he worked at a retail carrier was in 1998 at AT&T; even there, he wasn’t working in the cellular or consumer side of the house, but instead managed AT&T’s Asian wireline business operations and headed up corporate strategy.