Nortel man takes Vodafone business chief role

Vodafone announced a surprise appointment for its vacant UK enterprise director position.

Peter Kelly, the European president for the networks business Nortel, is taking the coveted role, which is the most senior position in Vodafone’s highly lucrative and market-leading corporate and SME division.

It was widely tipped that Mark Bond would take the job after taking the reins as acting enterprise director for six months. Bond is expected to be offered a senior job of similar seniority in the company in the coming weeks.

Bond stepped into the role following the departure of his predecessor and colleague, Kyle Whitehill, who was made COO of Vodafone’s new Indian division back in February.

Kelly comes to Vodafone with 17-years experience at Nortel, and the company said he will be expected to continue the ‘expansion of the enterprise business into unified communications, involving the design and implementation of solutions that encompass voice and data services across private and public, fixed and mobile networks’.

Kelly is believed to have been a major advocate of converging technology while at Nortel, and highly commercial. He will report to CEO Nick Read.

Vodafone has seen its 50% share of the corporate market attacked aggressively by O2 over the last two years, losing key multimillion-pound corporate accounts while it has pursued the SME market, where Vodafone’s share is closer to 30%.