Telstra's rural chief retires

Doug Campbell

In a statement announcing the executive's retirement from the Telstra Country Wide's (TCW) group managing director position, the company's new chief executive Solomon Trujillo paid tribute to Campbell -- who has over 48 years of experience in the telecommunications industry -- and said the executive had accepted his invitation to keep his foot in the door at Telstra.

"Doug has agreed to serve in the role of executive advisor to the CEO," said Trujillo. "This job will include, but not be limited to, special responsibility for developing our business in rural Australia, representing Telstra's interests to rural constituencies, and assisting us as rural customers upgrade their mobile phone services from CDMA to 3G."

"In addition, Doug has agreed to serve on the TCW advisory board," said Trujillo, claiming the retirement would not signal any major changes to what he called "the highly successful TCW model the company adopted in 2000".

Trujillo said Campbell's leadership had allowed him to built TCW into "a commercially successful business", as well as building alliances with regional communities and organisations.

The executive has headed up TCW since mid-2000, prior to which he held the same position in Telstra's Wholesale and International and Carrier Services Businesses.

In addition, during his time at Telstra he has also been in charge of Telstra's Network and Technology and Consumer and Commercial Customer Operations divisions.

Before the merger of Telecom Australia and the Overseas Telecommunications Corporation formed Telstra in early 1992, the executive was also deputy managing director of Telecom Australia. He has also served in his previous home country as president of Canadian National Communications.

In addition to his telecomms experience, Campbell is a qualified civil engineer.