Nazareno, a Cebuano, was shortlisted for the award following a poll of readers of Total Telecom, the London-based industry publication that organizes the WCA. Eleven other CEOs were nominated for the recognition, including AT&T’s Randall Stephenson and Vodafone’s Vittorio Colao.
The winner will be determined by a public vote and will be announced at a ceremony in London on Dec. 3.
Nazareno, who is also the president and CEO of PLDT, led the P67.1-billion network transformation program that enabled Smart to handle increasingly large volumes of voice, text messaging and mobile broadband services. “Smart finished super-charging
its network ahead of schedule, in mid-2012,” the company said.
With Nazareno at the helm, Smart launched in August 2012 the first commercially available Long Term Evolution (LTE) service in the Philippines, which is also one of the first in Asia. Under his leadership, the PLDT group, of which Smart is a member, has laid down more than 54,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable which link up the entire country.
Nazareno’s achievements have been recognized by several award-giving bodies, including the Telecom Asia Awards which named him Telecom CEO of the Year in 2012.
