CHANNEL PARTNERS CONFERENCE & EXPO, LAS VEGAS — The leader of the T-Mobile business group is reiterating the provider’s commitment to the indirect channel.

Callie Field, president of T-Mobile for Business, outlined a customer-first vision for the channel during her Tuesday morning keynote at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Las Vegas.

“T-Mobile has spent the last 10 years fixing some of the biggest pain points in wireless,” Field told the partner audience. “And we did it by putting customers first, changing the rules of the industry in their favor and delivering an insanely great value.”

T-Mobile’s Callie FIeld

The emphasis on the customer resonates with Field’s career history. Her 18-year career at T-Mobile most recently included a stint as chief customer experience officer. She said she leapt at the opportunity to lead T-Mobile’s business division. That’s due in part to how the business community is going to harness 5G.

“We have this asset at the most critical time in the history of the USA and the world, that we have got to figure out how to capitalize. Business and government are going to get there first. So if T-Mobile doesn’t build a rock star team of people who have experience, both in customer experience and in growing massive relationships with enterprise and government customers then we’re going to miss the opportunity,” Field told Channel Futures.

New Sales Leadership

She pointed to recently hired senior vice president of sales George Fischer as such an individual who brings a customer-first mindset. T-Mobile earlier this year announced the appointment of Fischer amid a reshuffling of business and channel-oriented roles.

Fischer had most recently been leading global sales at Fiserv. His past stints include leading Verizon’s global enterprise efforts and CA Technologies’ worldwide sales. Fischer said those roles have put him in touch with software and technology networks for all of his life. 5G seemed like the next step, he told Channel Futures.

T-Mobile’s George Fischer

“5G completely captured my imagination. All of the possibilities – everything from medical science to manufacturing operations – and the ability to have low-latency applications,” Fischer said. “You couple that with all the cloud transformation that’s going on, and it’s a huge opportunity.”

Field highlighted a variety of offerings to partners, including the Collaborate communications platform that leverages Dialpad. She also hinted at T-Mobile’s effort in the secure access service edge.

“In the coming months, our SASE solution will allow anything that touches our network, from mobile phones to IoT to fixed wireless, to be secured and managed so that employees can be secure and productive anywhere,” Field said.

Moreover, Field said 5G will blend with IoT, AI and robotics to drive something called the fourth industrial revolution. And T-Mobile, she said, is already innovating on that.

“Other carriers are at a proof-of-concept stage with things like mobile edge compute, and private networks, but we’re executing with large enterprise and government customers,” she said.