Fix of XT now job for whole company

The push to rebuild Telecom's XT brand will fall not just on the mobile division but across the whole company, says an industry analyst.

Telecom announced this week the man responsible for creating the plans, services and devices running on its XT network would be leaving.

Paul Hamburger - dubbed Mr XT - would depart Telecom at the end of his contract on July 8.

Industry analyst Rosalie Nelson of research house IDC said Telecom's long-term ambitions for the XT network remained just as crucial for the business as they ever were.

She said the task of mending the brand and restoring customer trust in XT would not be specific to Hamburger's replacement - the company's mobile business no longer operated in a silo and everyone across Telecom Retail and Gen-i would be working to rebuild customer relationships.

Hamburger will be the second Telecom executive to leave the company after a run of serious outages on its XT mobile network. In February, group chief transformation officer Frank Mount resigned with immediate effect several months short of concluding his fixed-term contract.

Hamburger was also on a fixed-term contract, initially for a 12-month period when he joined the telco mid-way through 2008. It was rolled over in June last year.

Hamburger is not understood to be leaving Telecom for another job and no announcements have been made regarding a successor. Nelson said his departure came as no surprise.

"Paul Hamburger was bought in for a very specific period and a pretty specific task, which was basically getting XT off and launched," said Nelson.

An industry insider said when Mount left it was obvious Hamburger would be "the next head to roll". A company spokesperson said the personal challenges of long periods of time spent away from his family and maintaining his Jewish faith were reasons for Hamburger's departure.

Hamburger splits his time between work at Telecom in Auckland, meeting technology and service vendors globally and Florida where his wife chose to stay with their four children.

When the Herald spoke to him before the XT outages, he said he spent about two-thirds of each month in New Zealand. Last month he said his time away had stretched to four to six-week work stints between visits home.