Three UK Appoint David Hennessy as Chief Technology Officer

Mobile operator Three UK has today announced the appointment of David Hennessy to be their new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The new chief will oversee the company’s major £2bn+ investment programme that aims to build “the UK’s fastest 5G network” for mobile broadband services.

David has been the CTO of Three Ireland since 2008 and will now lead a dual role in the Technology and Operations functions across both UK and Irish businesses, responsible for the network and IT systems. He will replace Susan Buttsworth, Three UK’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), who is due to leave the operator in June 2021 after working within CK Hutchison for 25 years in a number of roles across the Group (the role of COO will not be replaced).

The move comes shortly after Three UK secured an additional 2×10MHz of paired frequency spectrum in the 700MHz band for £280m during Ofcom’s recent 5G focused auction (here), which will no doubt help with their future rural coverage and voice service improvements.

Robert Finnegan, CEO of Three UK and Three Ireland, said:

“I am delighted that David is taking on the CTO role across both our UK and Irish businesses. David’s depth of experience will be invaluable to improving the network experience to bring better connectivity, every day, for every customer.”

However, it’s worth noting that the final outcome of Ofcom’s recent auction (due soon), may give rivals a similarly large contiguous block of 5G friendly spectrum to the one that Three UK already has, which could remove some of the operator’s advantage.

On the other hand, being the fastest network is about more than just spectrum ownership, it’s also about issues such as network infrastructure availability and having enough backhaul capacity to fuel your cell sites to support ultrafast speeds etc. At present Three UK has some of the weakest 5G coverage of all the big players.