Telstra chief Sol Trujillo speaks to Wealth Creator about his global plans, giving customers what they want and why he’s no longer bowing to Canberra.

Vitals

  • Name: Solomon Dennis “Sol” Trujillo 
  • Born: November 17, 1951 in Cheyenne, Wyoming, USA
  • Position: Chief executive of Telstra since July 2005
  • Education: Bachelor of Business degree and an MBA from the University of Wyoming.

Career:

  • 1975: Business forecaster for Mountain Bell.
  • 1995-2000: President, chairman and CEO of US West Communications. 2000-2003: Chairman and CEO of telco Graviton before its closure.
  • 2003: Appointed chief executive of telco Orange SA, having been a board member since 2001.

Did You Know: Telstra is at loggerheads with Prime Minister John Howard over plans for a $4bn fibre-to-the-node broadband network across Australia. Trujillo claims over-regulation is prohibiting the deal, adding that Telstra shareholders should not have to “subsidise foreign competitors”. Howard hit back in October, criticising Telstra’s approach to the communications minister and reiterating plans for a possible split of the company.

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Sol Trujillo - CEO Corner

Telstra chief Sol Trujillo speaks to Wealth Creator about his global plans, giving customers what they want and why he’s no longer bowing to Canberra.

 

 

Sol Trujillo - CEO Corner

Sol TrujilloSOL TRUJILLO

What has been your toughest challenge at Telstra?
This is a question I get asked a lot - especially by other CEOs. Without a doubt the really big challenge has been to change the actual culture of the organisation, to become a company that is truly focussed on its customers. Telstra was once a big government-owned enterprise and when I arrived there was a tendency to look towards Canberra to see what the government or the regulator wanted rather than putting customers first. You know, it’s relatively easy to build a new network or introduce a new product, but to create a fundamental change in the company’s thinking - that’s more difficult and it takes more than a month or more than a year. But we are getting there.

How have you got to where you are today?
I consider myself fortunate to have had experience as a CEO working on three different continents and the companies I’ve worked for have had business interests right around the globe. In Telstra’s case we have very exciting investments in Asia, with the largest wireless operator in Hong Kong and an online real estate business in China called SouFun - one of the top 10 websites in that fast-growing country. My advice to anyone who wants to be a business leader today is that you have to aspire to be world-class because we do operate in a truly global environment. In terms of the transformation we’re making at Telstra, we’re really working to make it a world-class company, a global leader.  We are at a point  where technology and communication devices are at a unique point of importance in everyone’s lives, at home, at work and on the go. It has been a privilege to have had the chance to do things that have had so much impact in people’s lives.

What have been the highlights of your time with Telstra?
Telstra is now about half way through a five-year business transformation with our goal to build value for investors. Our most recent results are showing improvements across the business, so our transformation is delivering results. I like to measure success through the eyes of our shareholders, our customers and our employees. From the shareholders point of view, since the government’s T3 share sale was completed late in 2006 Telstra’s share price is up strongly.   For the first time since Telstra faced competition in Australia we’ve actually arrested what had been a continual decline in the company’s market share.

Telstra is winning in the marketplace – in mobiles after launching our Next G network we became the 3G market leader ahead of plan with more than two million customers.  In broadband we have increased market share by 3 percentage points to 47 per cent – that’s up 6 per cent over the past two years. At the same time we’ve been increasing our margins. Thirdly, we’ve made some solid gains. For example we’ve slowed the decline in usage of the traditional fixed-line phone this year by 5 percentage points - something no other telco in the world has done. In fact, in the US and Europe decline has been happening at the rate of 6-8 per cent over the past two years. Finally, service levels are at historic highs.

What are your longer-term plans for the business?
We’ve reviewed every part of business and the result is we’ve taken out a lot of costs and removed a lot of overlapping outdated systems that have really caused a lot of complexity for staff and all sorts of service issues for customers. The final result will be the world’s best, fastest and most advanced networks.  The next stage will see the completion of our IT overhaul – a massive project that will give us enormous capabilities when it comes online. It’s exciting to think what we’ll be able to offer in the next few years – only with Telstra.

What’s in the pipeline?
We can be a world-leader in bringing together communications and content - as I like to call it a media-comms company.  You already see this with our Next G™ Network.  If you have a Next G mobile you can get access to Foxtel, you can look up information such as the Yellow directory, or Whereis maps.  We are the only company in the world that can provide end-to-end service on an IP wireless and wireline network where services will work seamlessly, so you can do things like easily make a video call from a mobile to an office anywhere in Australia.  There are some companies out there that are good telcos in the traditional sense and there are others that are in the media game, but Telstra is leading the way in bringing it all together, so there is great potential for more growth and great innovations.